


The Ballad of Catelyn & Brienne

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ASOIAF/GoT AU, F/F, Gen, Light Bondage, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff, epic love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1943256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frustrated by the shocking scarcity of material about Brienne & Catelyn, my OTP, I give you 13 chapters of fairy-tale love story.    I tried to take a lot of canon plotlines from both the books and showverse and put a different twist on them, to rearrange the story to be favorable to this pairing.</p><p>Here is a link to some new art I've made for them:<br/>http://sexghosts.tumblr.com/post/101268467842/a-little-brienne-cat-because-i-havent-done-any</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The murmurs of the woods, the clopping of their horses’ hooves, punctuated by occasional birdcalls, fills the long spaces between verbal exchanges.  Brienne is no good with small talk; it has no place in a world where things of such enormity seem to be descending upon them from all sides.  She had sworn her sword to Lady Catelyn but a few days ago, and Catelyn had accepted it; a recognition of one another’s honor and courage, and strength in the depths of grievous pain and loss, had caused them to cleave to one another with an immediacy and intensity that, under other circumstances, would have thrilled both their hearts.

They pitch camp for the night, such as it is.  They carry few supplies due to the haste with which they left Renly’s camp, but they have enough.  Brienne lights a fire, Catelyn roasts some root vegetables over it on a stick and warms a bit of salted pork.  Sitting on a fallen tree, they eat it, and share some bread, and wine from a skin.  They speak only a little, as their hearts are spent and they have a long road ahead.  Catelyn’s eyes grow heavy, and Brienne cannot abide her ladyship sleeping on the ground with a satchel beneath her head.  Ignoring her lady’s objections that she requires no special comforts, Brienne replaces the satchel with her own leg.  Catelyn is forced to admit that Brienne’s warm, strong thigh is a good deal more reassuring than a leather bag full of who-knows-what.  She drifts to sleep.

The fire dies, and the night chill creeps in.  Brienne awakes with her hand on Catelyn’s head, fingers threaded through her red hair.  Catelyn is shivering, and so Brienne first draws her lady’s cloak around her shoulders a bit more tightly, then takes off her own cloak and spreads it over her.  Catelyn lifts her head, and catches Brienne’s hand as it arranges the fabric around her.  She presses it to her lips, and Brienne feels a wave of pleasure at the tenderness of Catelyn’s soft lips on her rough knuckles.  “My lady, you must sleep,”  she ventures.

“I had forgotten, good Ser,” Catelyn’s sleep-hoarse voice says with a tone of gentle teasing that does not mock.  She does not release Brienne’s hand.  She would have difficulty explaining why if asked, but she finds a comfort in holding Brienne’s great, strong hand, one that she has not felt in some time, and she does not wish it to be over yet. They look at one another for a moment that feels much longer than it is, and then Catelyn again presses Brienne’s hand to her lips.  “Thank you,” she murmurs absently. But she lingers just a moment too long, and her warm breath spreads heat through Brienne’s fingers.

Brienne feels her blood rushing and her nerves crying out.  Swiftly, she leans down and kisses Catelyn on the lips.  It is brief, but not quite chaste.  There is a pause that seems endless, as they try to read each others’ faces.  Then Catelyn reaches up and takes Brienne’s strong jaw in both her hands, and pulls her face back down.  They kiss again, this time lingering as Catelyn had lingered over Brienne’s fingers, only longer.

Catelyn Stark’s lips are soft and savory, tasting faintly of wine, salt and the sage leaves she often favors tucking under her tongue, and Brienne delights in the rough, wild waves of her red hair in her hands.  It is, for both of them, a gentle reprieve from pain and grief, a moment of intimacy that Brienne has never experienced and that Catelyn thought she would never experience again.  They draw back after a long moment.  Catelyn smiles sadly.  She knows that it can never be more than this.  There are so many reasons why her sworn shield should not be her lover.  Brienne sees that sadness in her wide blue eyes, and looks away.  “Goodnight then, my lady,”  she says.

***********************

The next day, they speak nothing of the kiss.  They ride as swiftly as is reasonable to ask of the horses.  They are beset by three thieves at a bend in the path, common thugs.  Brienne quickly shows them the error of their ways.  Catelyn watches her as she knocks the steel from their hands and then lays waste to them, then drags their bodies off the path.  “They won’t be missed,” she tells Catelyn grimly, wiping the dirt and blood from her gloves onto her saddle blanket.

They camp out again that night, but this time Brienne builds no fire.  It seems unwise to draw attention to themselves.  Those thieves are probably not the only ones in this part of the wood.  The sit quietly in the pale moonlight and share bread and wine.

“You fought well,” Catelyn says after a long silence.

“It was nothing.  They were just thugs.  They never landed a blow,” Brienne says matter of factly.  It was true, they were untrained, low-born criminals.  Nevertheless, it gave her some pride to have served her lady today.

“I am fortunate to have you to protect me,” she says.

“Anyone could have handled them,” Brienne says dismissively.

“I could not have,” Catelyn pointed out.

“Any trained swordsman,” Brienne countered.

“You have few equals and even fewer betters, and you know it,” Catelyn scolds.

Brienne harumphs.  Catelyn rolls up a saddle blanket, places it beneath her head, and drifts off into a shallow, fitful sleep.

Brienne takes out her sword and cleans and sharpens it.  She picks through the satchels and saddle bags, taking inventory of what supplies they still have.  When Catelyn begins to stir in her sleep, crying out for Ned, Brienne rushes to her side.  She clumsily strokes Catelyn’s hair and kisses the back of her neck until she settles into a calm sleep, not caring whether her lady ever knows if it was her, or thinks it was poor Ned’s ghost.

***************************************

The next few days are grey, but their spirits are lighter somehow.  They ride side by side where the path will allow it, mostly in a kind of easy, comfortable silence that one finds between people who know each other so well they need not speak.  Their nights are restive, punctuated by moments of fierce tenderness.   Brienne considers what is welling up in her heart for the strong, noble Lady Stark.  _If I find someone worthy of serving,_ she thinks, _I cannot help but love them._

When they come up on the small, dull village of Oakendale, they realize that they have perhaps another day at most until they reach Robb’s camp.  Brienne is glad to be bringing Catelyn back to her beloved son, but knows there will be no more long, quiet days together, no nights spent watching Catelyn sleep at her feet.

The village has an inn.  Brienne tosses a coin to a boy and says, “There are more of these for you if you will bring us in around the back and stay outside the door for us, to see to our needs this evening, lad.”

The boy looks incredulous.  “You’re a knight?” he demands.

Brienne draws herself up, a completely unnecessary move as she already towers over the boy.  “Yes, and my lady and I wish to attract as little attention as possible.”

The boy looks at their clothes, at the rich fabric of Catelyn’s fur-trimmed cloak, realizes that Catelyn is most surely a highborn lady and that strange as it may be, this enormous woman was some sort of knight.  He leads them round the back of the inn, and up to a room. The one bed is not a featherbed, and in fact feels as if it’s filled with straw, but it is a bed, and they collapse on it, exhausted.

The boy settles their business for them, brings them a hot meal and a washbasin with some water.

Catelyn unpins her hair and begins removing her dress with an efficiency that startles Brienne.  The maid of Tarth clomps over to the window to stare with sudden great interest at the cluster of nothing-much-whatsoever that is Oakendale while Catelyn tends to herself.  The sloshing of the water in the basin stops.  After a few beats of quiet, Catelyn says, “Brienne, would you not also like to avail yourself?”

Brienne turns around.  Catelyn’s lean, strong shape is alarmingly visible through her chemise.  She is magnificent.  Brienne’s voice gets caught in her throat for a moment.  “Er, no, my lady.  I, ah… it is too much to ask of you to help me back into my armor.”

Catelyn sits down on the bed, pursing her lips.  “You’d not be the first warrior I’ve helped into a suit of armor, you know.  When Ned was leaving with Robert, for the war…”  Her voice cracks.  Ned.  The war.  His return home, with a bastard in tow.  Her brow furrows.  “Well, if you change your mind, fear not.  Sadly, I have more than enough experience with such things.”

A pounding on the door.

“Thank you, we need nothing more right now!”  shouts Brienne, but she is already drawing her sword.  The pounding sounds too heavy to be the boy.

Again, more insistent pounding.

Brienne waves Catelyn out of the way, and she retreats to a corner, safely out of view of whomever might be on the other side of the door when it opens.  “Nothing more tonight, thank you!!” she bellows again, but then flings the door open to find an unwelcome sight.

Four men wearing the Lannister sigil, three with swords drawn, one restraining the lad and wielding a knife.  “Stand aside, woman, and I’ll let the lad go,” he sneers.

“Of course you will,” she grunts.  As she lunges past him toward the other three men, she plants a gloved hand on his face and slams his head backward into the wall.  It leaves a bloody spot on the stone and he sinks to the ground.  The boy is free of his grasp but stands frozen in terror.

“Run, boy!” she shouts at him, as she swings her sword about in the narrow, ill-lit corridor.  The Lannister men are not her equals, but they are trained fighters, unlike the thieves from the wood.

Exasperated, she shouts again at the boy, “RUN, LAD!  GET OUT OF HERE!”

The distraction is enough for one to manage to land a blow to her upper arm.  The bite of his steel fills her with enough pain and rage to finish the fight.  She dashes back into the room.  Catelyn has already gathered their things and thrown her cloak on over her chemise.  The strings of her gown hang out the top of one of the two satchels she carries.

They pick their way out over the bodies of the four men, who look as if they had merely passed out from too much drink.  They run out the back, the way they came in, mount their horses, and ride out into the night.  They had no intention of waiting to find out whether there were more Lannister men around, or whether those four had sent a raven to anyone before deciding to come up and foolishly attempt to abduct Catelyn.  They ride hard for  hours, until the sun begins to go down, and then they make their way off the path to stop and gather themselves.

The night is not as cold as the past ones have been, a blessing since Brienne is adamant that they do not light a fire.  Catelyn notices the dried blood on Brienne’s arm.  She cleans it with a bit of water and tears a long piece of linen from her chemise, but the wound goes up at an awkward angle beneath the shoulder plate of her armor, and Catelyn knows that she will have trouble wrapping it in a way that will keep it covered.  “This,” she says, knocking on the breastplate of her armor with a dull thunk, “is going to have to come off.”

Brienne begins to object, but Catelyn is having none of it.  “I cannot wrap this wound properly if you do not remove it, Brienne.  And you are no good to me if you die of an infection.”

Brienne grumpily concedes.  Catelyn helps her with her various buckles and straps, and they remove the heavy breastplate.  “This thing must weigh a hundred stone,” she grunts as she lays it aside.  “I cannot imagine how you wear it constantly.”

“Still weighs less than your petticoats,” Brienne grumbles in reply.

Catelyn gives a wry smile.  She wraps the wound, winding the linen up and over Brienne’s shoulder.  She sits back and inspects her work with satisfaction.

Brienne, now that the immediate concerns have been addressed, suddenly realizes that she is sitting here without her armor on, feels Catelyn’s eyes on her, and feels very naked.

“You are cold,” Catelyn realizes. And looking down at her own disheveled state, she adds, “and so am I.” She moves closer to Brienne, huddles up beside her, and wraps her cloak around them both.

Brienne feels the fur against her skin, and the warmth of Catelyn’s body next to her, and she is too tired to resist the urge to lay her head on Catelyn’s shoulder.  She breathes the scent of her, of smoke and fire, leaves and cold rain.  “Your hair smells like autumn, my lady.” she says stupidly.  Unthinkingly, she kisses the side of her lady’s neck.

The gesture ignites something in Catelyn.  Whether it is the danger of the moment, the knowledge that they will soon reach Robb’s camp, or something altogether different, the feel of Brienne’s lips on her neck makes her suddenly burn, pierces her gut with longing.  She tilts Brienne’s face up to hers and kisses her with an urgent hunger, and Brienne is startled but responds in kind.  There is little between them but a few layers of thin linen.  Brienne has never had anyone on this side of her armor, and now here she is, so close she can feel her lady’s chest moving with each thick breath.  Her heart flings itself against her ribs as if trying to escape them.

Catelyn falls back into the grass, her hair rippling around her.  Brienne swears that she could drown herself in this woman.  She lowers herself onto Catelyn’s body and lets all her nerves make note of the way it feels to be pressed against her … Catelyn’s long, strong bones, the soft rocking of her hips, their asynchronous heartbeats racing, as they lay breast to breast, belly to belly.  After several minutes of passionate kisses, Brienne mumbles weakly,  “I … I do not know… how this works,”  moving slowly against Catelyn as if trying to simply melt into her.  She wants to please Catelyn, possess her, lose herself in her… but she does not know where to start.

Catelyn kisses her softly.  _Sweet Brienne, still a maiden,_ she thinks, and is overcome with protective affection.  While Catelyn has never lain with a woman, she at least understands intimacy and desire, and she remembers her own sense of feeling lost the first time she lay with Ned. “There is not only one way,” she says with a gentle smile. “We shall show one other what to do.”

Amid fevered kisses, they touch each other’s bodies, first with gentle reverence, then with soul-deep hunger.  Brienne seeks Catelyn’s permission each time she places her hand or her lips somewhere new.  Despite some moments marked with fumbling, the heat grows between them. With gentle whispers they guide each other; “…here…” and “…slower…” and “…again…”  They revel in the feel of something neither has experienced before; the taste of each others’ mouths, the scent of each others’ skin, the sound of each others’ soft moans.  They find and kiss each other’s scars; Brienne’s, the random, angry criss-crosses of battle wounds, and Catelyn’s, the pale, ragged stripes of childbearing. They etch themselves onto each others’ bodies in the pale light.

Brienne rises up, moved by the growing ache between her legs that relentlessly pushes her toward something she cannot articulate.  But knows she wants it desperately.  She entwines her thighs in Catelyn’s, and presses her wet, aching sex to her lady’s, gasping at how raw and alive it is.  “My lady,” she manages.

“And you are mine,” Catelyn whispers.

They rock their hips together, first slowly enough to savor the warm friction, then fast enough to bring themselves and each other to a shared moment of ecstasy.  It roars through them like an earthquake, like an ocean tide that knocks them back and leaves them wet and gasping for air.

They cast about and cover their half-clothed selves with their cloaks.

Brienne rests her head on Catelyn’s chest, still running her hands along her strong, feminine frame.  After a long silence, she says, “We will likely reach your son’s camp tomorrow.”

Catelyn’s fingers are entwined in Brienne’s shaggy hair.  “I know.  And we will not be able to be…”  She pauses sadly.  “..like this.”

Brienne entertains asking Catelyn to run away with her, but Catelyn is a woman of honor and duty, and would do no such thing.  It is what caused Brienne to love her in the first place.  “So you will do your duty, then.  And I will do mine.”

“Can you?  After this?  if you say cannot, I will release you, and I will not bear you ill will.  And I will still keep my vow to you, that you will always have a place at my table and in my home.”

 _And what about in your heart?_   Brienne wants to ask, but does not.  It does not matter.  She is sworn to serve, and she cannot help but love those who are worth serving.  “I cannot leave your side, my lady.  I have no wish to serve another.”  She clenches her jaw and pretends she is not quietly weeping.

Catelyn strokes Brienne’s hair and pretends not to notice the few hot tears that are falling onto her chest.  But her voice is thick with emotion.  “Then stay.”

They shed a few more tears together, quietly, and then sleep for what remains of the night.


	2. Pretty Girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne's quest to return Jaime to King's Landing and retrieve the Stark girls goes a bit differently than in canon. Sansa and Brienne get to know each other and trust each other with some difficult secrets.

Catelyn watches Brienne’s back disappear into the woods, dragging her captive, her bargaining chip, the Kingslayer.  She can think of no-one she trusts more to bring her daughters back to her alive than the Maid of Tarth.

Over the weeks it had taken them to travel from Renly’s camp to Robb’s, they had bonded in the dark of their nights in the woods, talking beside fires, sharing simple meals, Catelyn often sleeping with her head on Brienne’s lap, the lady knight’s fingers entwined in her hair.  One of those nights, when Catelyn had awakened crying from a nightmare about Ned’s death, Brienne had come to her, comforted her, kissed her, stroked her hair, and stayed by her side until she was calm enough to sleep again.  Catelyn’s walls had come crashing down, her defenses disarmed by this noble and big-hearted woman.  Finally, there was someone, somewhere in her life, who was ready and willing, and even happy, to make just a little space somewhere for her to not have to be so strong all the time.

And now that someone was bravely going to rescue her daughters.  And Catelyn was going to have to be strong again, alone, in the face of Robb’s certain anger at her choice to trade away Jamie Lannister.

Since they arrived at Robb’s camp, she and Brienne have been conducting themselves as Lady Stark and her sworn shield, and nothing more.  And Brienne’s stoic presence has made her feel at ease as she moves about the camp, dealing with the men and her own son’s wolf-blooded wildness.  But there is simply no room in this world, in this time of war, for Catelyn to abandon her duties as Stark matriarch to go playing house with some woman in armor.  She does not think of it this way, but Robb’s men would.  The Lannisters would.  She can not risk turning the tide in their favor by way of ill rumors.  And she is sure that her children would not accept this, or see it as anything but a betrayal of their father.  And so, though she wishes she could lie with her again as they did that last night before they reached camp, when she was allowed on the other side of Brienne’s armor, and felt all her softness in the cool night of the wood… it simply can not be.  There is too much risk involved.

But she can dream, and she can remember.  She remembers Brienne leaping from her horse to slay some thieves that had gotten the poorly-conceived notion that robbing two women in the forest was a good idea.  Her shaggy blond hair whipping about as she cut them down with savage grace.  Catelyn still feels the rush of it.  The feel of Brienne’s warm, muscular thigh under her cheek at night as she slept.  The outline of her strong jaw in the firelight as she kept watch; the long, loving looks she often gave Catelyn when she thought her to be asleep.  And the feel of her kisses, all soft lips and rough, searching tongue; smooth cheeks and warm breath.  Dear gods, the kisses…

It is her kisses Catelyn thinks of when she is alone in her tent at night.  They keep her warmer than her fur-lined blanket can.  It had been like healing a wound for Catelyn, to lavish her affection upon one who so needed it, and so deserved it; to cover Brienne’s great, powerful body with kisses was like balm to her own cracked and wounded heart.  To touch everywhere on her that was soft, and give it pleasure that it had never known.  To hear her whisper, “Yes, my lady,” lost in the ecstacy that Catelyn was visiting on her with her fingers and her mouth.  The way she had moaned when Catelyn had kissed her tenderest places…. The way she had tasted… Catelyn had been with no man but Ned, and certainly never a woman.  But she is finding that the distance and the passage of time only make her hunger for it more, not less.

Catelyn now bitterly wishes that it had been more than the one night.  Here in Robb’s camp, with Brienne’s reassuring presence no longer at her side, she wishes that she’d made an entire journey’s worth of memories with which to warm herself in her bed, in her quiet, dark tent, while her devoted protector is away from her.  But she draws that one brightly burning memory around herself like a cloak, lets its heat wash over her, and slides a hand down between her legs to help her lose herself in it.

***********

Brienne’s mission to return the Kingslayer to King’s Landing is, by all measures, a success.  The journey has been difficult, but she and Jamie Lannister have come to something of an understanding.  Built partly on respect for one another’s swordsmanship, and partly on the experience, shared by so few, of having to make dreadful choices when fulfilling the service of one’s oaths.  Jamie and Brienne have saved one another’s lives on a few occasions during their time on the road.

“You’ll be rewarded,” he promises her as the spires of Kings Landing come into view.

“The only reward I need is fulfilling my duty to Lady Catelyn,” Brienne says gruffly.

Jamie smirks.  He has long suspected that Brienne’s affections for Catelyn Stark extend somewhat beyond the normal bounds of knight and lady, but he says nothing.

Brienne notices this. “What?”  she grumpily demands.

He shrugs.  “Nothing.”  He understands what it is to have a love that cannot speak its name.

When they arrive, the guards insist that she relinquish her swords.  “You must disarm, madam.  At the Queen’s orders,” one of them says.  She is displeased about this, but Jamie assures her that she will be safe.  “I wish to see Lady Catelyn’s daughters first,” she insists.

The guardsmen escort her to a chamber, usher her inside.  A smooth-faced, red-haired girl, the spitting image of what Catelyn must have looked like in her youth, stands by the window.  She turns to face them, puzzled at the sight of this enormous woman in armor, in the company of Jamie Lannister and the guards.

“You see, Brienne?”  Jamie says cheerfully.  “Lady Sansa is fine.  Now please, give the nice guards your swords so that you don’t end up having to kill them when they try to take them by force.” He smiles so charmingly, Brienne wants to punch him in the face.  “You’ll get them back when you leave,” he promises.

“What is the delay?  Why can I not simply leave now and take the Stark girls with me, as agreed?”  Brienne persists.

“Because I am quite sure the Queen would like to thank you,” he says breezily.  “Now sit, have a drink, you two beauties get to know one another, and I promise someone shall send for you soon, hmm?”

Brienne is deeply unhappy, but surrenders her weapons, and Jamie excuses himself while the guards posted themselves outside the open door.

Sansa is perplexed now.  “I don’t understand…?”  She could hardly help noticing that Jamie Lannister had looked like hell.  The effects of rotting in a cage in her brother’s camp, she supposes.  But why is he here?  And who is this woman?  Is she a knight? Sansa has never seen the like.

“I am sent by your mother, my lady,” Brienne explains.  “She made an arrangement with Lord Baelish, to trade the Kingslayer for you and your sister.”

Brienne is distressed to learn that nobody knows the whereabouts of Arya Stark.

Sansa’s voice is quiet, her words ever cautious, as she explains to this strange woman knight the little she feels comfortable telling.  Brienne is wise enough to know that despite whatever mutual respect she and Ser Jamie have for one another, that the Queen is not to be trusted.  The terror and tension in Lady Sansa’s eyes, and the tales of the Queen’s treachery that Catelyn had told her, convinces Brienne that they are most definitely not going to wait to be “thanked” by Cersei Lannister.

Brienne may not have her swords, but she still has the knife in her boot.  She knows that Jamie is aware of its existence;  he saw her use it in their travels.  Yet he hadn’t asked her for it.  So, she reasons, he expects that his sister is probably going to try to kill her.  She casts her eyes about the room for a moment until they settle upon a large bronze pitcher.  She walks over to it.  “Do you use this pitcher much, my lady?”

Sansa shakes her head.

“Bronze, is it not?”

Sansa nods dumbly.

Brienne nods thoughtfully.  She stoops down, quietly draws the knife from her boot, then stands up.  She picks up the pitcher with one hand.  Heavy as stone.  Good.  She walks slowly toward the open door.  “That’s a shame, my lady … it must be because it’s much heavier than it looks!”  She swings the thing, braining the first guard to the back of the head with it, and stabbing her knife into the throat of the other guard before he can even realize what happened.

She turns wildly to Sansa, whose jaw has dropped open.  “Come, my lady.  We must make haste.”

Sansa gathers up her skirts and they run.  They stop, as they can hear the sound of marching coming from one direction, so they dart down a different hallway.  Sansa knows these halls rather too well.  She points to a stairwell at the end.  “That will take us to the stables,” she whispers.   When they reach the stairs, Jamie Lannister is waiting for them, holding both of Brienne’s swords, smiling crookedly.  “Well done,” he says simply.  “Now, you’ll want to go down these stairs, but don’t take the corridor to the right the way you normally go to the stables, you’ll need to go left and out the back of the ktichens, or you’ll be seen.  There are men down there already.”

“He’s lying,” Sansa ventures.

Brienne shakes her head.  “I don’t think so.”  She takes her swords from Jamie.

“I told you you’d get them back when you left,” he says.

“But why would you help me?”  Sansa persists, still not believing it.

“I’m not helping you, little mouse.”  He answers, and looks at Brienne.  “I’m helping her.”

“A Lannister always pays his debts?”  Brienne asks skeptically.

Jamie smirks again.  “We can’t help who we love.”

“I do not take your meaning, Ser Jamie.”

He punches her on the arm.  “Go, Maid of Tarth.  Hurry.”

They run down the stairs and take the route that he had suggested.  Behind them, they can hear him shouting misdirection to the guards, “They went that way, towards the dungeons!”  They creep out to the stables, Brienne shanks a few more guards, and then they steal a horse, and flee.

***************************

They share one horse, riding with Sansa clinging to Brienne as the horse pounds over rock and river.  When they finally come to a place near the edge of a wood, where Brienne feels it is safe to pitch camp, they dismount.  “Where are we going?”  Sansa asks.

“Her Ladyship said she planned to return to Winterfell, so that is where ride to.”

Brienne catches and skins some rabbits and builds a fire.  She takes the same care for Sansa’s comfort that she would have taken with her mother’s.  Well… almost the same.

As they eat their dinner, Sansa opens up to this curious lady knight, and all the terrors of living at King’s Landing begin tumbling from her lips.  Brienne listens with horror… horror at what a monster the young king is, at what this poor girl endured at his hands, and she feels a hot rage well up in her chest.  Unchivalrous beast, that boy king.  She almost wishes she could go back to King’s Landing and lop off his head herself.

After talking long into the night, Sansa grows sheepish and apologizes for going on at such length.  Brienne tilts her head to the side and looks at her.  “My lady… you were a prisoner.  And now you are free,” she says.  “No one would begrudge you to talk about what you have suffered.”

Sansa smiles appreciatively.

“Sleep now, my lady,”  Brienne says, as gently as she knows how.  “We ride at first light.”

*********************

As they ride the next day, Sansa asks Brienne how she came into her mother’s service.

Brienne’s voice becomes emotional.  “Your mother saved me.”

She tells of the shadow demon that killed her beloved Renly, and how Catelyn Stark had recognized her devotion to him and trusted her innocence.  How she had taken her into service and given her a new quest.

“You mean me,” Sansa says.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, my lady.”

“How did you come to be a knight?  I love the old songs of the knights too, but I could never imagine… I mean, armor and swords…  You remind me of my sister.”

“You are a pretty maiden,”  Brienne says frankly.  “I never was.  Too tall and too broad for dresses.  Hands better suited to holding a sword than braiding my hair.  I never had a choice.  Look at me, Lady Sansa.  Even my suitors never bothered to pretend they wanted anything but my father’s title and wealth.”  She tells a few abbreviated versions of the tales of shabby treatment she has received from men all her life.

Sansa feels a wave of sympathy.  “Well, if I were a man, I’d be mad for you,” she says kindly.

Brienne almost cracks a smile in return.  “You remind me of your mother, my lady.” Brienne can think of no higher compliment.

*************************

The woods open onto hills and fields, and they ride with purpose.  One night, they shelter from a rainstorm in a barn they are lucky enough to find.  Sansa watches the rain and lightning for a long time without words.  She had begun to wonder whether the Maid of Tarth ever slept, but now she notices that Brienne’s head is resting on a crate behind her, and that she is in fact dozing.

She hears her mumble a few times in her sleep, “Cat… Cat…”

Sansa furrows her brow a little.

“Catelyn…”  Brienne mumbles.

Sansa decides she has no right to eavesdrop on Brienne’s dreams, and nudges her awake. Brienne sits up with a start, reaches instinctively for her sword, and then relaxes when she sees Sansa looking curiously at her.  Then she tenses again, worrying that she had been talking in her sleep, because she had been dreaming of the tender affections of Catelyn Stark.

She clears her throat.  “I’m sorry my lady, I should not have fallen asleep.”

Sansa shakes her head.  “Everyone needs sleep. You were talking, that’s all.”

Brienne tries not to turn red.  It doesn’t work.  “I hope my words did not offend.”

Sansa shakes her head.  “No.  It seems that you dreamt of my mother.”

Brienne freezes.

They regard each other uneasily.  Sansa senses that she has touched a nerve.  “You called her quite familiarly.  Are you… friends?”

Brienne looks at the floor uncomfortably.  “Lady Sansa, I … yes, we are friends.”

“But you called her Cat,”  Sansa pursues.  “Only my father called her that.”

Brienne clears her throat again and attempts to change the subject.  “Have you found any wood in this place dry enough to build a fire?”

Sansa shakes her head.  Suddenly, a confetti of memory fragments come together in her mind.  The affection with which Brienne speaks of her mother.  How she talks of loving honor and duty above all else.  That odd remark of Ser Jamie’s, “We can’t help who we love.” And then that curious conversation with Lady Margaery that one time…

Suppressing a nervous giggle, Sansa begins, “Margaery Tyrell once said… well, she was giving me a long list of all the different sorts of men that a girl could … fancy…  you know, hairy men, bald men, ugly men, pretty men… but then she said …pretty girls, as well.”

Brienne looks at her, trying to remain implacable, but her eyes are storming.

“She just sort of slipped it in, you know, and.. I thought she was joking!”  Sansa exclaims. “But… was she?  Do you… fancy pretty girls?”

Brienne’s pale cheeks go scarlet and hot.  “Your mother is not a pretty girl.  She is a strong and honorable woman,” is all she can manage.  The truth is, it had never entered her mind until quite recently to fancy any sort of girl.  “And I love her for it.”

“But…”  Sansa realizes she has stepped into something she doesn’t quite understand.  She thinks for a moment.  “Do you love her as my father did?”

“I did not know your father, Lady Sansa, but I am told he was a good man.  I do not know his love for your mother.  All that I can tell you is that I love your mother as I love no-one else.  When I am with her, I never leave her side, I have a care for her person in every way, and I would die for her without hesitating,” Brienne says miserably.

Sansa digests this for a moment.

“She must think well of you, to have trusted you with the task of bringing me back to her.”

Brienne shrugs.

Sansa thinks for a moment more.  “So, does she… love you in the same way?”

Again, Brienne shrugs.  She and Lady Catelyn have not discussed their feelings for one another again since that night.  She knows that Catelyn surely feels a tenderness for her, an affection and trust.  Whether she burns at the memory of their night together, as Brienne does, is anyone’s guess.  She sighs heavily.  “Please, Lady Sansa, no more questions about this tonight,” she pleads.  “And I must beg you to never speak of it to anyone, most of all your mother.”

It is clear to Sansa that Brienne is feeling exposed and ashamed, and Sansa feels badly for having put her there.  “Brienne, you are a truer knight than any I have known.  You are more honorable and more worthy of my mother’s love than any man walking the earth.  I cannot say I understand it, but… your love seems true to me, and if you wish to give your heart to her instead of only your sword, I will not keep you from her.”

Brienne hears echoes of Catelyn in her daughter’s voice, of the oath Catelyn swore to her that day when she first pledged her service.  This combined with the sweetness of Sansa’s words brings the great woman to tears.  They spill from her eyes in fat, wet raindrops, softly pinging on her armor, as her chin and jaw quiver.

Sansa becomes even more gentle, her voice even softer, and she places a hand on Brienne’s armored shoulder.  “Ser Brienne, if my mother does not love you, I will tell her myself that she is a fool.”

 


	3. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne arrives at Winterfell with her charge, not knowing whether Catelyn's feelings for her remain strong. Sansa talks some sense to her mother.

When Brienne rides into Winterfell with Sansa, the courtyard explodes with joy.  A crowd surrounds their horse with shouts and cheers.  Brienne is unaccustomed to being rewarded with such applause, and it makes her a bit uncomfortable.  She is pleased, but she also wants it to be over.  She has, after all, not managed to retrieve Arya.

Catelyn comes running down with the Maester.  Brienne lifts Sansa off of the horse and into her mother’s arms, where they weep with joy to see one another.  After several long moments of embracing and crying, Catelyn stops long enough to throw her arms around Brienne and whisper, “Thank you.”  She looks around.  “Where is Arya?”

Brienne scowls.  “Littlefinger lied to you, my lady.  Arya has not been seen since Joffrey killed Ned. But I will find her for you, I swear it.”

Catelyn’s eyes are spilling tears as she embraces Brienne again and says, “I have no doubt of it, my brave one.”

And then she is gone.  Catelyn and her daughter are swept inside by a cadre of men and ladies in waiting, and Brienne is left standing beside her horse, a little dazed and stunned, being slapped on the back by one Northman after another.  The Maester comes to her side.  “Her ladyship asked me to see to you.  What do you require, Ser Brienne?  A hot meal, perhaps?  A bath?  A bed?”

Brienne nods.  She notes that he’d addressed her as Ser Brienne, no doubt at Catelyn’s instruction.  “All three, Maester.  In that order.  And some comfortable clothes.  No dresses, if you please.”

**************************

Catelyn and Sansa spend hours talking.  About the war, and Robb and his new bride, Arya’s disappearance, and the many almost-marriages that Sansa had been subjected to, and on and on.  Finally, Sansa sighs.  “And Mother, what of Brienne?”

Catelyn looks quizzical.  “Yes, what of Brienne?”

“She is brave and loyal.  A true knight, with a strong, kind heart like the ones in the songs.  And she loves you very much, you know.”

Catelyn nods.  “And I her.  She is a true friend.”

Sansa raises an eyebrow.  “Is that all?”

Catelyn frowns.  “Sansa?”

“She _loves_ you,” Sansa insists.  “As Father loved you.  Mother, the way she talks about you… Surely you must know this.  I have no other word for it, but that she _loves_ you.”  She looks sternly at mother’s stunned face.   “Now what of it?”

Catelyn, surprised, fidgets with her empty cup.  “Well, what of it indeed?”

“Well?  Do you love her as well?  In the same way?  As you loved Father?”

Catelyn frowns.  “It is none of your concern, Sansa.”

Sansa crosses her arms.  “Then, yes?”

Catelyn becomes vexed.  At this moment, she rather wishes Sansa were not so much like her.  She stomps over to the chamber door, secures it, then stomps back.  “Fine,” she says irritably, in a hushed voice.  “Yes.  Are you satisfied now?  I do love her.  Of course I love her.  How could I not?  But it is folly to pursue.”

“Love is never a folly,” Sansa says firmly.  Still carrying a banner for love, Catelyn thinks, even after all she has been through.

Catelyn laughs ruefully.  “Love is often a folly.  The risk to our house, to Robb, to the war, is too great for me to chase this… this… whatever it is.”

Sansa sighs, exasperated.  She has a bit of her mother’s steel in her spine.  “She has a noble heart, and is more worthy of your love than anyone I know of.”  Sansa shakes her head, and clasps her mother’s hands.  “Someone in this family needs a bit of happiness, Mother.  If she makes you happy, then do what you must.  I will spill no secrets, and I will give you no shame for it.  Life is grim, short, and brutal, and we are not meant to be alone in it.”

**********

It is late in the night when Catelyn sends for Brienne.  She paces her chamber floor as she waits, the rustle of her skirts seeming impossibly loud. “We are only going to talk,” she whispers to herself anxiously. But the thought of kissing Brienne again is impossible to banish. “It is only Brienne, and we are only talking,” she whispers, seizing a cup of wine, drinking some, and then pacing across the room again. She catches sight of herself in the mirror; a highborn lady stares back at her, older but still fetching, dignified, with perhaps a dozen strands of silver in her red hair … and looking as nervous as a girl of fourteen. She is annoyed by this, and smooths her skirt with her palms as if it will help compose her.

Brienne arrives. Catelyn offers a wordless prayer to the gods and lets her in.

Aside from their one night in the woods, she has never seen Brienne out of her armor.  She wears a loose shirt of green velvet with a high collar and long sleeves, brown leather breeches, and a dark green cloak with a bit of fur around the neck.   _She looks like she belongs here_ , Catelyn thinks, _like a true Northman_.  Brienne’s face is serious.  She has no idea what to expect.  Catelyn brings her into the chamber and closes the door.

“My lady,” Brienne says cautiously.

Catelyn throws her arms around her and Brienne tentatively returns the embrace.  Catelyn reserves nothing, pressing herself against Brienne from shin to shoulder.  After a long moment of feeling her so close, Catelyn pulls back.  “Let me look at you.” She surveys Brienne, tall and strong, the velvet shirt clinging to her body, the cloak sweeping down from her broad shoulders, blond hair slightly messy and still drying from a bath …  She is everything Catelyn has remembered and dreamt of, this entire time they’ve been apart.

“I have missed you,” Catelyn whispers, unable to refrain from placing her hands on Brienne’s face, raking her fingers up the back of her neck, and through her damp blond hair.  The intent of her touch cannot conceal itself, and with each passing moment she is becoming less sure that she wishes it to.

“My lady,” Brienne begins helplessly, squeezing Catelyn’s shoulders as if trying to keep herself from falling. She closes her eyes, almost afraid to believe that Catelyn is touching her this way again, afraid that this is one more dream from which she will wake, aching, alone in her bed.

When Catelyn pulls her in for a kiss, Brienne’s knees grow weak.  She wraps Catelyn in her arms and lifts her off the floor.  She would gather her up and carry her away if she could, to someplace where they could do this all of the time.  “What of honor and duty, my lady?”  she asks breathlessly, when they stop kissing long enough for her to get the words out.

“What of my duty to you? You have given me a gift which demands I respond in kind.”  Catelyn replies.  “Do you know, I dreamed of you constantly while you were away.”  She kisses her again, her heart racing at the feel of Brienne’s soft lips once more.

“And I you, my lady,” Brienne answers, between deep, slow-burning kisses.

Catelyn unclasps Brienne’s cape and tosses it aside.  She pulls her over to the bed.  “Tell me, what did you dream?” she asks, sliding her hands over the velvet of Brienne’s shirt.

Brienne bites her lip and pauses awkwardly.  “May I show you, my lady?”

Catelyn kisses her fiercely, then draws back.  She slips her hands beneath the shirt and pulls it over Brienne’s head, leaving her standing before her shirtless, in only her leather breeches.  She looks like a great marble statue of an ancient warrior.  Brienne has never experienced someone looking at her this way, and it makes her feel vulnerable and thrilled all at once.  After drinking that splendid sight in for a moment, Catelyn reclines on the bed.  She unlaces her gown a bit and lets it fall open to show just a little of her bosom.

Brienne straddles Catelyn’s legs and crawls up the bed, up the length of her body, until they are nose to nose.

“Do you want to kiss me?” Catelyn asks.

Brienne nods and leans in.

Catelyn puts a hand up to her chest and stops her.  “Tell me.”

“What?”

“Say it.”

Brienne pauses, but then understands.  “I want to kiss you, Catelyn.”

Catelyn smiles.  “Where?”

“On the promenade of my father’s castle, by the blue water, with the breezes in your hair,” Brienne tells her tenderly, though she knows it is probably not what Catelyn means.  “But I suppose here will have to do.”

Catelyn smiles at the romance of that image for a moment, but is after a different answer.  “Where… on me… would you like to kiss?” she presses.

Brienne has barely ever spoken of such things, and is so nervous doing it that she can hardly make the words. “Your, er… your mouth…”  she stammers.

“And?”

“Your… your neck…”  she continues.

Catelyn begins to ache at the thought of it.  She unlaces the gown a little more.

“Where else?”

Brienne leans in again, and again, Catelyn stops her.  “Where else, Brienne?” Her voice is husky.  “Tell me where you are going to kiss me.”

Brienne feels as though she is swimming out of her depth, but she would gladly dance a jig right now if it caused her lady to look at her this way and ask her for more in that deep, seductive voice.  “Your wrists, my lady.  Your back.”  She pauses awkwardly.

Catleyn slips the gown off her shoulders, revealing her breasts.  “And where else?”

Brienne’s heart pounds.  “Your tits, and the space between them.   Your stomach,” she continues.  “Your hips.  Your thighs…”  She pauses, struggling to articulate a desire that is so new that she has no words for it.  “I want to spread your legs open and kiss you there, and… Make you feel what you made me feel that night in the woods.”

Catelyn bites her lip appreciatively.  “Do you want me, then?”  she asks, her voice becoming an impossibly low purr.

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

Brienne’s eyes are blazing now.  “I want you, my lady.  I want you in my arms, naked.  I want to feel your skin with my own.”

They are both breathing harder now.  Brienne continues on, softly describing in her lady’s ear everything that she can think of to do to her naked body.  She stumbles on her words at times, but they are all sincere as she describes the dreams she has had while they were apart. As Catelyn listens to Brienne’s voice telling her what she is going to do, with Brienne’s half naked body just inches from hers, the heat between her legs grows.  And Brienne’s self consciousness is melting away as she sees how eagerly her lady listens, her eyes half closing in delight.

Brienne is finding that she likes this game after all.  “And what did you do, sweet Catelyn, when you dreamt of me?”

Catelyn, practically drunk with desire now, whispers coyly, “I’m quite sure you can guess.”

“Show me?”  Brienne requests.

Catelyn lifts her skirt, and slides her fingers down between her legs, softly stroking herself in slow circles, feeling the heat building there, gazing into Brienne’s smoldering eyes and delighting in the desire she sees.  Brienne watches hungrily, until she can finally stand no more and frantically tears the dress from Catelyn’s body, and they devour one another with abandon.  They roll back and forth on the bed, scrambling out of their clothing and kissing and biting each other ravenously.  Brienne flips onto her back and sweeps Catelyn on top of her.  They quickly lock their thighs together and thrust their hips to a climax that comes hard and fast as they were already so aroused for one another.

It is the first of several that night.

********************

They lay together for a while in silence.  After coaxing a number of feverish, trembling orgasms from each other, they are both exhausted.  Brienne sits propped up on some pillows, with Catelyn curled around her, head resting on her chest, idly kissing it.

Finally, Brienne asks, “So what happens now, my lady?”

“Breakfast?” Catelyn suggests with a yawn.

“Really.”  Brienne is earnest.

Catelyn sighs.  “We must keep it secret, I fear.”

Brienne frowns.  She understands, but she does not care for deception.  “Except from Sansa.”

“Except from Sansa, I suppose,” Catelyn agrees.  She lifts her head.  “What did you tell her, exactly?”

Brienne shrugs.  “Only that I love you.  She has your wit, Catelyn.  I could not have kept the truth from her for long.”

“She was quite insistent on your behalf,” Catelyn remarks.

“You sound surprised, my lady.” Brienne is almost a little offended.  “Did you doubt that I would win her over? She is so like you, did you not think she would see me as you do?”

Catelyn smiles and shakes her head, tracing a finger along Brienne’s jaw. She sighs again.  “Brienne, I am used to being certain, and this makes me feel uncertain.  I do not know what this becomes, nor even what to call it.”

Brienne holds her close, savoring the feel and scent of her.  “Nor I,” she admits.  “But if  I were a man, I would make you my wife, Catelyn.  Of that much, I _am_ certain.”

Catelyn finds it easy to imagine such a life.  Summers here, riding and hunting in the woods, winters by the blue waters of Shipbreaker Bay. “You would be my Lord then, would you?  Put great, blond children in my belly?” she teases.

Brienne smiles.  It is absurdly girlish in a way that Catelyn did not know Brienne could be, but it lights her face so disarmingly that Catelyn thinks she would move the heavens barehanded to see more of it. They share a long, adoring gaze that they luxuriate in, and then an even longer kiss.

“We will make our own way with this, Catelyn,” Brienne says finally. “I swear this to you.  I do not know what it will be, but we will make our way.”

The sun will be rising soon.  They sleep a peaceful sleep, entwined in each other, knowing that for once, they need not rise with it.

 


	4. Secrets in the Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The realities of wartime rear their ugly heads.

Brienne, feeling that she has not fulfilled all of her lady’s quest, is keen to begin searching for Arya.  But Catelyn is insistent that she remain at Winterfell a bit longer.  “I must stay for a little while and make what order I can of Winterfell’s affairs, and we have no warriors among us right now but you.  All of our men are with Robb.”

And so for a few weeks, time passes at Winterfell almost as before the war.  Except, of course, short a few Starks.  Sansa spends a great deal of time at her mother’s side, learning to prepare for winter and manage the affairs of Winterfell.  Catelyn wants Sansa to learn these things so that she can be a proper lady to whomever she marries, but also because in the back of her mind, she wonders if she might soon be journeying elsewhere and leaving Winterfell in her daughter’s hands.

Brienne attends some of Catelyn’s meetings, hearings and inventories with her, and sits out others.  Most of the time, she is never far from her side.  A few times, she goes riding in the woods with Bran, or gets tours of all the secret passages of Winterfell from little Rickon.  She comes and spends many a night in Catelyn’s bed, practically dying of gratitude to the gods each and every time.  They discover the tender places on each others’ bodies, and how best to please them.  They discover how to whisper sweet, wild things to one another that stoke the desires of their hearts.  They discover what it is to be the object of someone’s love, and someone’s lusts as well.  Catelyn had spent twenty years in the arms of a man who was kind, loving and concerned for her comfort in the bedchamber, but he had never driven her mad with desire, she had never asked him for a thing, and much as she had loved him, following his lead sometimes had felt like more of a duty than a pleasure.  Brienne has never been treated as though she is beautiful, but Catelyn makes her feel that way.  They are finding something together that lifts their spirits and fulfills needs that they had both convinced themselves did not exist, or did not matter.

Catelyn goes some days to visit the Godswood. On those nights, Brienne does not share her bed. Brienne understands that Catelyn is working to reconcile the intensity of what they share with the fact that Ned’s soul permeates the stones and trees and wind of this place. Even Brienne, as an outsider, feels it, in the way the people speak of him, and in the faces, words and deeds of the Stark children for whom she is learning to care more than she ever expected.

And she sees it most in her lady, in the kindness and strength she shows from her seat in the Great Room.  Catelyn runs Winterfell with confidence and calm, dealing with her Northmen with a firm hand and loving heart.  Brienne would not have thought it possible, but she grows more smitten with her by the day.

**********************

When Theon Greyjoy and the crew of the Sea Bitch arrive one steel grey morning, Brienne is almost unsurprised.  She has never known a time of such sweetness in her life as this, so why would it last without event?

She awakes to the sounds of him bellowing at the folk in the courtyard, claiming to be the new Lord of Winterfell.  She springs from Catelyn’s bed and scrambles into clothing.  Catelyn hastily helps her don her armor, all the while grumbling about the turncloak, Greyjoy.  They peer out the window a moment, watching him parade about like a peacock.  A stupid, treacherous, murderous peacock.

She and Catelyn run from the bedchamber and are greeted by the sound of running feet, and steel.  Brienne cuts down the two Ironmen, but she knows that there are many more and the odds are simply impossible that she can take all of them.

“The children!”  Catelyn exclaims.  “We must get them to safety!”

Brienne remembers a passage that Rickon had shown her.  She shoves aside a large wolf tapestry to reveal a small door, and pulls Catelyn through it.  They scurry, hunched low, through the tunnel behind the wall, until Brienne leads them to Rickon’s room.  Brienne looks through the small peep hole and sees that no Ironmen have found their way here yet, so she pushes the wall open, jostles Rickon from his bed, and bids him follow her.

“Now Rickon,” she says, “we are going to play a little game, you and I, and your mother.  Can you show us how to go through the secret tunnels to Bran and Sansa’s rooms?”

Rickon nods sleepily.  “What is the game?”

“We are pretending that there are monsters in Winterfell, and we must make our escape,” she says, careful to control the urgency in her tone.

“Why don’t you just slay the monsters?” he asks, yawning.

“I will, little man, but first we must get you to safety.  That is the first part of the game. Is Bran’s room closer, or Sansa’s?”

With Rickon’s help, Brienne delivers the Starks out of a tunnel on the eastern wall and they break for the hills.  Catelyn knows of a farm not far from here that is loyal to the Starks that will shelter them for a short time while they plan their next move.

********************

Brienne wishes to retake Winterfell.  Catelyn is practical.  She knows that no matter how good Brienne is, she cannot retake Winterfell alone when it is overrun with twenty Ironmen.  They sit in the farmer’s house, running over their options.  Sansa suggests that perhaps they ride up to the Wall and see if they can spare a few Crows to aid them.

“Jon Snow would come,” Sansa argues.  “Winterfell is his home too.”

Catelyn’s face darkens at the mention of his name.  “We will not be seeking help from Jon Snow.”  She thinks they should ride out to Robb’s camp.

“You have no time for those options, Lady Stark,” says a booming male voice.  They look up to see a rugged-looking man leaning in the doorway.

Brienne jumps to her feet, reaching for her sword.

“I am no enemy of yours, lady warrior,” he says.  “I served the late Eddard Stark, and I and my brothers fight still, in his name and in the name of Robert Baratheon.”

He enters the room, followed by a ragtag band of men at arms who look more like robbers and theives than warriors and knights.  “Who are you?” Brienne demands.

“I am Beric Dondarrion,” he says.  “And we are the Brotherhood Without Banners.”

A much smaller figure pushes to the front.  Though at first it appears to be a boy, on second look it is a young girl with a longbow slung over her shoulder.  Catelyn has to look long and hard to recognize her.  She is taller, more serious, and more heavily armed than the last time Catelyn saw her, but…

“Arya!” she cries out.

Arya’s face is haunted and dark.  She is glad to see her family, but allows herself no weeping.  She explains that she had started out a captive of the brothers, but that she now fights alongside them. She explains that she has learned to warg, and had warged into a crow, and through its eyes saw them running from Winterfell. It was she who had convinced the brothers to come find them here.  She comes and embraces her mother, her sister, and her brothers, and then pauses before Brienne.

“Who’s this?” she asks suspiciously.

“This is Ser Brienne,” Catelyn says.  “She is my sworn shield.  She delivered your sister from King’s Landing, and she has saved my life several times.”

“Hm. A knight, then,” is all Arya says.

Catelyn pleads the case to the Brotherhood that they must help them retake Winterfell.  Arya is ready to fight, and insists that Beric help.  “If I am one of you, as you say,” she asserts, “then you must help me to eject these villains from my house.  You still fight in my father’s name, Beric.”

Beric agrees, but balks when Catelyn says that she wants Brienne to lead the assault.

“No disrespect, my lady,” he says, shaking his head, “but she is not one of us, and I cannot follow a woman into battle.”

Brienne draws her sword.  “If you can knock me down, or land a blow, I will follow you,” she says.

Arya raises an eyebrow.

Beric and Brienne duel, and while he fights far better than anyone else she’s fought lately, it is over soon enough, with her boot on his chest.

*********************

The brotherhood and Brienne are preparing to leave to attack.  Catelyn pleads with Arya to stay with her and the other Stark children at the farm.  “I have only just found you again.  I could not bear to lose you.”

“Someone must stay and look after your mother, and your sister and brothers,” Brienne points out.

Arya gives in.

As Brienne and the Brotherhood are leaving, she goes to Brienne, places a hand on her shoulder, looks at her with grave seriousness, and says, “Don’t cock it up.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Brienne calls out sarcastically as Arya stalks away.

**************

The Starks wait together, trying not to check the sky for signs yet.  Rickon naps on a bale of straw in the corner and Bran sits quietly, staring at the fire.  Arya grumbles that she should be with the brothers.

The fire flickers and begins  to spit and dance wildly.  The shutters begin to rattle, and the heavy wooden door flies open.  The red witch Melisandre glides in, almost appearing to float an inch above the ground.

“You!!” Arya hisses.

Catelyn knows who she is, and is secretly glad Brienne is not here to take a swing at her.

“What do you want with us, witch?” Catelyn asks.

Melisandre offers revenge.  “Robb plans to attack Casterly Rock.  He cannot do this without help, and if he seeks such help from Walder Frey, it will be to his doom.  I have seen it.  Stannis will send him aid, and men, to take it.  In return, Robb will aid him in securing the Iron Throne and recognize him as the one true king.  Robb will be king of the North, Stannis will sit on the Iron Throne, and the Lannisters will fall.”

Catelyn is dubious.  “Why not visit Robb yourself?  I am no battle commander.”

“He will not listen to me.  You must convince him.  If you do, there will be reward for you as well.  You are his mother, he will listen to you.”

Catelyn laughs bitterly.  “You must not know my son.  Besides, witch, you have nothing I want.”

“Do not be so sure, Catelyn Tully.  I know the most secret wishes of your heart.”

Catelyn is discomfited by the strange way that the witch’s stare seems to rake across the back of her mind and turn up bits of her thoughts. “I doubt that,” she says, but she feels uneasy.

“I could put a child in your belly.  Your beloved’s child.”

Arya sits up sharply.

Catelyn rolls her eyes. “I have heard enough, witch.  You speak nonsense.  Leave us be.”

“You could give her an heir,” Melisandre goes on. “The Lord of Lights can do such things.  She could keep her father’s seat and name, and preserve his bloodline.  Is there after all nothing more important in this world than family, Catelyn Tully?  Think on it.”

“My name… is Stark!” Catelyn spits out, trembling and completely unnerved.

Melisandre glides out the door.  Catelyn, Sansa and Bran sit stunned.  Arya chases after Melisandre, a knife drawn, but finds nothing in the cold, damp night but stars and a cloud of her own breath.  She storms back inside.

“What fucking beloved??  What is she talking about??” she demands angrily of Catelyn.  “Have you already forgotten my father??”

Catelyn is shocked, guilty and distressed.  “Arya, he has been in the ground nearly two years.  I have been alone…”

“I died the day Joffrey cut Father’s head off!”  Arya cries.  Her breath is heaving now.  “Who is it?  It’s that knight of yours, isn’t it?”

Catelyn tries to calm her, but to no avail.  She tries to suggest that the witch was talking nonsense, but Arya is having none if it.  “You’re a liar!”  She runs out into the night, tears getting cold on her face, to catch up with the raiding party.


	5. Better Judgment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya struggles to accept Brienne. They head into battle together to take back Winterfell. Some ass-beatings and entertaining dialogue ensue. Brienne and Catelyn's relationship continues to grow.

Arya makes haste into the dark night, bow slung over her shoulder as she runs.  She comes upon the Brotherhood and Brienne, who are gathered on a hilltop, scouting Winterfell to get a look at Theon’s fighting force.  Beric and Brienne are discussing strategy when Arya runs up, panting.  She points accusingly at Brienne. “You!  A word.”

Beric gestures Brienne to go ahead, with the resigned air of a man who has argued too many times with Arya Stark.

They walk a little way from the group and step behind some trees.  “I thought you were staying at your mother’s side,” Brienne says.

Arya shrugs.  “Look,” she says, her tone belligerent, “my mother won’t tell me the truth, but you had better.  Are you fucking her?”

Brienne looks and feels as if she had been punched in the stomach.

“Technically impossible, m’lady,” calls Beric cheerfully from the other side of the trees.

“Fuck off, Beric!” Arya shoots back.

“Of course, m’lady,” he replies with the same good cheer.

Arya turns back to her.  “Well?  Are you?”

Brienne is blindsided and is unsure of how to answer.  “My lady, I do not disrespect your mother.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Arya snaps back, “but that isn’t what I asked you, is it?”

“I have sworn my life to her,” Brienne says shakily.  “She is my lady, and I am her protector.”

Arya regards her in stony silence for a moment.  “I’ve heard it’s more than that.”

“From who?”

“Doesn’t matter.  Is it true?”

After a heavy sigh, Brienne plants her sword in the ground, and sits down in the dirt.  “Sit down,” she says.

“Careful, I might kick you in the head,” Arya warns.  But she sits.

Brienne looks at her sympathetically.  “I love your mother.  I see to her every need.  I live to serve her.  I have risked my life for her many times, and right now –right now!– I march to Winterfell to take it back for her, and for your brothers, your sister…and even you.  Your mother saved me, Arya.  She believed in me when nobody else did.  She offered me kindness and care I never thought I deserved.  And she has a strong and generous heart.  Is it so hard for you to understand why I would love her?”

Arya says nothing but she looks a little sad.  “I suppose I can’t be angry at you,” she acknowledges. “It’s not your fault. But I AM angry at her. She’s betraying my father!”

“Listen.  I never knew my mother.  She died when I was small.  As far as I can remember, my father had a different woman every year.  I never knew if he was happy with any of them or not.  I never learnt to care for any of them, and they never had a care for me, most of them.  That he might be betraying some memory of my mother was the least of my worries.”

Arya frowns.

“That is not what your mother is bringing upon your house when she brings me into it.  I could not replace your father if I wanted to.  Winterfell belongs to the Starks, after all.  I cannot marry your mother, nor take the name of Stark away from her.  But know that I do no dishonor to her, or to your house.  I only want to stay by her side, and to serve her, for the rest of my life, if I can.  And if I can be a friend to you as well, then all the better.”

Arya stands up.  She looks at Brienne for a long moment, saying nothing.  “Well, then,” she says finally, her tone giving away no emotion.  “Let’s go kill some Ironmen.”

*****************************

The Ironmen fall.  The Brothers fight with brutal efficiency, and Brienne leads them with confidence and grace.  Arya’s longbow cuts down two before they have even made their way through the gate.  “Good shot,” Brienne comments, before blazing through the gate and cutting down two more of her own.  Arya, despite herself, can’t help being impressed by Brienne’s skill.

When the battle is done, all but three are slain, and Theon is chains.  The Brothers bring him before Arya.  “What shall we do with him, Lady Stark?”  Beric asks.

“I’d kick him in his balls if I could find them,” Arya says.  She swings a booted foot into his crotch and he collapses into the dirt, moaning in pain.  “Oh, there they are.”  She looks at him coldly.  “Lock him up.”

*******************************

When Catelyn and the children return to Winterfell, she embraces Brienne, and then turns to Arya.  Arya looks at her.  “I’m still angry with you, Mother.”  She stalks away.

Catelyn decides some levity is needed.  She instructs the Maester to arrange a banquet for the family, and the Brothers.  They eat, a few of the Brothers play some merry little tunes on string instruments, and they dance.  Arya eats, mostly silent, and does not dance.

After dinner, Catelyn and Brienne walk in the courtyard while she tells Brienne of the appearance of Melisandre and her strange offer.  Brienne struggles with her feelings on it.  She wishes to end the war, and the prospect of being Lord of Tarth, with a blood heir that is hers and Catelyn’s, is beyond tantalizing.  But she swore an oath to make Stannis pay for killing Renly, and she cannot dismiss it so easily. Besides, how would the witch make good on her promise? There were too many questions.

Inside, Sansa sits by a window, watching Brienne and her mother, walking and talking.  Arya appears by her side.  “What’s so interesting?” she asks.

Sansa gestures out the window.  “Mother.  And Brienne.  See how they are, together?” She sounds a little wistful, almost envious.

Arya looks out of the window.  They look at each other with such affection.  Arya feels a little sick.  “So what.  She is betraying Father.”

A light rain starts to fall.  Brienne takes the cloak from her shoulders and holds it up to shelter Catelyn as they continue talking.  Catelyn clearly tries to insist it is unnecessary, but Brienne is firm about it.  Some joke passes between them, and Brienne takes Catelyn’s hand.

“Father is gone,” Sansa says.  “And Brienne loves Mother.  It’s good for her.  I don’t understand it, but Mother needs her now.  Look how sweet they are to each other.  It’s so much to ask of her, to be strong for all of us.  Who is ever strong for her?”

“I could be strong for her,” Arya says sulkily.

“Are you joking?” Sansa laughs.  “Right now, it seems you’re one more thing that _requires_ her strength.”

Arya looks peeved.  Mainly because she suspects Sansa is right.

***************

Catelyn has decided to ride out to Robb’s tomorrow.  She knows she cannot ask Brienne to fight for Stannis, but they have agreed that the war must end, and that Stannis’s offer is the best way.  Catelyn secretly thinks that Robb is too impulsive to sit on the Iron Throne, and Catelyn has more desire to see the Lannisters pay for their crimes than she does to be the Queen Mother.  As for the witch’s other promise … they decide to leave it lie and make no plans for now.  Its enormity is too much to entertain.  Ending the war and bringing down the Lannisters will be good enough.  Over much protest, Catelyn insists that Brienne will stay and watch over Winterfell with the Stark children.  The Brothers will be departing tomorrow, and it would not be wise to leave it undefended.

After the last few weeks together, Brienne can hardly bear the thought of being apart from Catelyn.  In her chamber, Brienne is kissing her lady’s hands and entreating her to be as swift and safe in her journeys as she can.

“It will not be long,” Catelyn promises.

Brienne wraps Catelyn tightly in her arms, knowing that it is quite possible that everything is about to change.

Catelyn returns her embrace, but Brienne can feel that a part of her is elsewhere. She pulls back and looks at her. “You are afraid, my lady?”

Catelyn sighs. “No, but…What if the witch can truly do as she says, and give me your child somehow? What if …” She trails off, afraid of hurting Brienne with her hesitations. This love of theirs is so different, so “other”, that she has managed to forgive herself for it thus far, but now, the witch has turned her heart upside down and dumped it out, and Catelyn was not ready to see its contents.

Brienne understands. “It is more than you thought you would have with me. And you feel you would be stealing something from Ned by doing it.”

Catelyn nods.  “The witch has taken from me everything that was safe about that dream.”

Brienne’s heart indulges in a joyful skip, just one, to hear Catelyn admit in so many words that she had indeed dreamed of such things, even if only idly.  She steps back and takes Cat’s hands, gathers them to her lips and kisses them. “Cat, I am yours. Sworn to you and no other. And I will be wherever you need me. Behind you, shielding your back; ahead of you, clearing your path. Inside of your bed, or across the Narrow Sea. And I will ask nothing of you that you feel you cannot give. The witch offered you something; you need not accept it, now or ever.”

Catelyn’s heart is wrenched by her words. Who could refuse so bottomless a love as this? “And if it is never?”

Brienne’s face emanates sweetness as she touches Cat’s cheek. “I will still be yours. And you will still be my lady.” She leans down and kisses Catelyn’s forehead. “Good night, Cat. Do not fear for my heart. Or your own.” She turns to go, expecting that Catelyn will want to be alone this evening.

But Catelyn grabs her hand. “Wait.”

Brienne stops.

“Stay tonight.”

Brienne is cautious. “Are you certain, my lady?”

Catelyn kisses Brienne hard, suddenly all tongue and teeth. “I need you tonight, please stay.” Her voice is almost desperate.

Brienne is surprised; on other nights when Catelyn has struggled with thoughts of Ned, she has preferred to be alone.  But Brienne carries her to the bed, lays her down, holds her, strokes her hair, and soothes her with soft kisses on her cheeks and shoulders, for a long time. When Catelyn begs for lovemaking, Brienne is glad to oblige, but she is slow, careful, pausing at each turn to make certain that Catelyn’s body and heart are prepared to accept her.  She replaces Catelyn’s brittle urgency with her own gentle, loving calm, easing her along with great care, a little at a time.  When Catelyn finishes, trembling and digging her fingers into Brienne’s shoulders, Brienne kisses her, and holds her while she sheds tears quietly in the half-dark. “You do not have to be strong tonight, Cat,” she whispers.

Catelyn kisses Brienne’s chest, clinging to her tightly, as if her grip upon the here and now depends on it. She suspects that it does.


	6. Oaths and Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a disturbing dream, Catelyn finds an honorable way to reconcile Brienne's oath to kill Stannis with Stannis's offer of an alliance with Robb. Also, we run into Yara Greyjoy.
> 
> (Please don't be upset that I went with the showverse name rather than the book name. I had to pick and Gemma Whelan's embodiment of the character is so thoroughly entrenched in my mind at the moment.)

Catelyn sleeps fitfully that night. At one point she awakes in what she knows must be a dream, in a room of white stone and linen, with salty breezes breathing through the great open windows and a dazzling blue sky beyond them. She finds herself in a bed of pearly grey silks, naked, with a baby at her breast. The baby is a boy, with wisps of Tully auburn hair and slate-blue eyes like Brienne’s. Brienne is kissing the back of her neck and whispering loving things to her and the baby. “He has had enough to eat, my love. Lay him down.” The boy is drowsy and blissful with milk, and Catelyn sets him in a cradle beside their bed.

She feels Brienne’s familiar touch begin to caress her, stroking her tenderly and quickly enough arousing her desires. She rolls onto her back and Brienne is on top of her. They kiss with soft hunger, lock their hips together, and soon they are making love. At this moment, Catelyn feels the long-distant but distinct sensation of a cock inside her. She opens her eyes to find that Brienne, while still Brienne, is also a man, and is thrusting inside of her with growing force.

She awakes in her own bed in Winterfell with a start; panting, disoriented and disturbed. Brienne is snoring beside her, and upon inspection is still in possession of the same equipment that she was when they made love a few hours ago. Catelyn shakes her head and goes back to sleep.

************

The next morning, Catelyn still prepares to ride out, but plans have changed. She rides to Stannis instead.

Brienne is confused and concerned. Catelyn says, “I swore to you that I would not keep you from Stannis. I cannot break my word to you.”

“My lady, are you certain?” Brienne is concerned. “I could not live with knowing that you sacrificed the chance to win the war and dispense justice on the Lannisters for my benefit.”

“I will do no such thing,” Catelyn assures her. “Brienne, you must trust me. Do you?”

“Of course, Catelyn.”

“Then know that I will keep my vow to you. When the time comes, I will not keep you from Stannis. But the time has not yet come.”

***********

Stannis is courteous but caught off guard when Catelyn arrives at Dragonstone. Even the Red Witch appears to not have been expecting her. “Lady Stark,” he says, a bit stiffly. “Please, sit.”

“Thank you, your grace.” He is not king yet, but she will play the game.

“We are surprised to see you so soon.”

“Your Grace, I am here to address a conflict of mine in the matter of your proposal. I am prepared to counsel my son to accept your offer, but not until you fully understand what comes along with making this arrangement.”

Stannis is bemused. “Please explain, Lady Stark.”

“My shield has sworn an oath to kill you in vengeance for the death of your brother Renly,” Catelyn says bluntly.

“I was not aware you had such feeling for my brother.”  Stannis’s tone is painfully dry.

“The oath was not sworn to me.”

“Then bid him break it,” Stannis says with obvious impatience. “Why is this my problem?”

“That I cannot do. I swore to her that I would not keep her from you.”

Stannis smirks. “Your shield is a woman? Lady Stark, has your son really taken every last man from the North?”

Catelyn is impassive. “Your grace, understand, she does not serve my son, she serves me. So whatever truce you make with Robb, I gave her my word, and I do not break my word .”

“This is hardly the beginning of a friendship, Lady Stark,” Stannis says, incredulous.

“Perhaps not. But I could not have you enter an agreement with Robb not knowing that someone in my service wants your head.”

“Release her from your service then!” He is growing annoyed.

“In truth, it is her service to me which keeps her too occupied to pursue you.”

“Then keep her busy,” he snaps. “Send her for Dornish wine every other week!”

Catelyn regards him silently.

“I will be king!” he exclaims. “Do you know the men who guard my person, Lady Stark? They are good warriors of noble birth and well hardened in battle! Do you have some secret wish to send your shield to her death?”

Catelyn shakes her head. “I do not send her, your grace. In the matter of your head, I am afraid she is driven by an oath sworn before she came into my service. Is it of concern to you, or is it not?”

“What do you suppose a king should do if he learns that someone wants his head?” Stannis demands.

Catelyn remains implacable. “It is your choice, your grace.”

Stannis gestures mutely for a moment. “Many people wish you dead when you are king! Tywin Lannister would have my head on a pike at King’s Landing, and even wielding the powers of the Hand, he has failed thus far. What care I if some woman with a sword holds a grudge?”

“If that is your final word, then I will deliver my son to you, your grace.”

Catelyn departs, and Stannis turns to Melisandre. “Is this a game?” he demands.

“I sense no deception from her,” she replies.  Melisandre knows that Catelyn’s shield is also the lover whose child she had promised Catelyn would be able to bear.  But she has also felt the fierceness of the Stark woman’s heart, and knows that Catelyn’s desire for retribution against the crown would hold strong even if some harm were to come to her warrior maiden.  Even stronger perhaps, if that death could be blamed upon the Lannisters.  However, she reveals none of this to Stannis.  She merely asks, “Shall we send an assassin to take care of this shield, my king?”

Stannis is dismissive. “Put out a mark? On some woman? What is the point?  If she does choose to approach me she will have to get through a line of Florents and Tyrlwhites. If Catelyn Stark has some reason for wanting to get rid of her, it is none of my affair.”

*****************

Brienne and Arya both sleep poorly in Catelyn’s absence, albeit for different reasons. It is only a matter of time before they find each other lurking about the kitchens past midnight, looking for a bit of wine and something to eat.

“What are you doing up?” Arya demands.

“Same as you, I imagine, Lady Arya,” Brienne says, pouring Arya a cup of wine and passing it to her without even asking.

Arya takes it and drinks. “Just Arya,” she says. “I’m not much of a lady, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Brienne smiles a little.

“What?”

“When I first met your mother, she addressed me as Lady Brienne. I believe I said the very same to her.”

Arya frowns. They drink their wine in silence for a few moments. “Did your father teach you to fight?” she asks finally.

“At first. Then he put me with sword masters who were better than him.”

Arya feels a pang of sadness as she remembers her own father secretly arranging lessons for her with Syrio Forel. “You’re good,” she says grudgingly. “I’ve only ever seen one other man bring Beric down.”

Soon they are talking swords and steel, the best ways to use a short dagger and how to skin a rabbit. Brienne is relieved to have a conversation with Arya that doesn’t involve Arya threatening to kick her in the head. Arya recognizes a seriousness and strength in Brienne born of being a warrior and a misfit, a girl not meant to be lady of the castle. It never gets warm or friendly, but neither is it adversarial. Brienne is about to wish her goodnight when there is a clattering in the courtyard below, the familiar racket of horses, and a woman’s voice bellowing the name of Theon Greyjoy.

They run to the window and see a woman on horseback, flanked by two Ironmen. Brienne wheels on Arya, drawing her sword. “Get your bow.”

“Who in hells is that?”

“Unless I am wrong, it is Yara Greyjoy.”


	7. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa learns diplomacy on the fly. My obsession with the Yara/Brienne platonic BROTP is born.

Brienne rides out to meet Yara Greyjoy and her men. “Lady Greyjoy, I presume.”

She directs their eyes to a window above the courtyard, where Arya has her bow drawn with an arrow aimed their way.  Yara smiles a lazy, cocky smile that reminds Arya of Theon.  “So it’s just you two, then?”

“Yes!”  Arya calls from the window, before Brienne can answer.  “And we are more than enough! We made short work of your brother’s men, so don’t get any ideas.”

Yara raises an eyebrow.  If the girl is telling the truth, it would be somewhat impressive.  And since there is no sign of her brother or his crew, she has to assume for now that she is.

Brienne has them disarm and secure their horses, while Arya runs to wake Sansa.

Yara looks up at Brienne on her horse, and tries to guess.  “You’re not a Northerner, are you.”

“No, Lady Greyjoy.”

“But you guard Winterfell.”

“Yes.  I serve Lady Catelyn.”

“I’m sure you do,” Yara says, looking Brienne over.

Brienne bristles, giving her a hostile look but saying nothing.

“Be calm now, big woman,” Yara soothes.  She is the kind of girl who always looks like she’s chuckling internally at some secret she knows about you.  “It’s no disrespect.  You’d be right at home in the Iron Islands, a girl like you.”

A few beats of uneasy silence.

Sansa comes out into the courtyard.  She is clearly nervous and tired and a little unsteady.  “Brienne, please escort Lady Greyjoy and myself to the Great Room.  Her men may wait out here.  Arya will guard them.”

Arya has perched herself atop a wagon laden with bales of straw, bow in hand.  Brienne trots close to her and  says under her breath, “Don’t. Kill. Anyone.”

Arya rolls her eyes.  “Fine.”

*************

In the Great Room, Sansa pulls Brienne aside for a moment and whispers nervously, “I have never done anything like this.”

Brienne nods thoughtfully.  “Nor I, my lady. Just …try to do what your mother would do.  And I will help you if I can.”

Sansa is not comforted by this.  “Lady Greyjoy,” she says, as firmly as she knows how.  She puts as much of her mother’s tone into her voice as she can.  “How may we help you?”

Yara stands before her, chin up, shoulders back, unintimidated.  “I am come for my brother, Theon.”  She did not arrive here prepared to negotiate.  She rather assumed he’d have the run of the place and she could simply strike him on the head and drag him back to the Islands.

Sansa smiles a little at Yara’s nerve.  “But why would we return him to you?  By all rights, as was decided between my father and yours, his place is here at Winterfell, is it not?”

“Your brother released him.”

“Yes, he did,” Sansa agrees.  “To fight for House Stark.  To bring an offer to your father.  And now we are repaid with Ironmen invading our lands and Theon trying to take Winterfell.  I have not my mother’s instinct for politics, but it seems to me that your brother did not keep his word.”

Yara feels sure that she can wrest a concession from this girl, who seems so delicate and innocent.  “And where _is_ your mother, little lady?”

Sansa’s back stiffens and her clear eyes go several degrees cooler.  _If she thinks she is going to twist my arm by treating me like a child, she will leave here empty handed,_ she thinks.  “Ending a war, Lady Greyjoy.  Where is your father?”

“Starting one.”

“Then we are left with each other, it appears.”

Yara regards her for a long moment.  “Lady Stark, do you have little brothers?”

“Yes.  Two.”

“And are they stupid cunts?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are your little brothers stupid cunts like mine is?”

Sansa tries not to laugh.  Sansa is every inch a lady, but still has the fleeting thought that it would be interesting to have met Yara Greyjoy under other circumstances.  “I don’t think so.  Not yet, at least.”

“When your little brother is an idiot, part of loving him means trailing round after him, sweeping up his mess.”  She measures Sansa’s face to decide whether she is making headway.  “He is a man without a home, Lady Stark.  Raised here, among a family that, no matter your kindness, is not his.  And on his return home, rejected by his father for being too like the family he was sent to live with by no choice of his own. Of course trying to take Winterfell was stupid –and treacherous– it was no command of my father’s! He was plainly trying to prove himself a man of the Islands, worthy of my father’s respect.”

Sansa considers her. What would Mother say? “No matter how sad your brother’s story is,  I am sorry, but I cannot return him to you.  He attacked my home and tried to take it from us, after he grew up alongside us as a brother.  I am sorry for your position of having to clean up after him, but… it is a bit more than a spilt cup of wine.”

Brienne interjects at this point.  “What are you prepared to offer Lady Stark for his safe return?”

“The promise that I will not come back with an army to take him by force,” Yara says, matter-of-factly.

Brienne looks at her with distaste.  “Brave words for a woman who only leaves here alive at my lady’s pleasure. Do you know who I am?”

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“My father is Selwyn Tarth.  If I raise my banner, I can have a hundred men here as fast as the tides can bring them.”

Yara is suspicious.  “I knew of no alliance between Tarth and House Stark.”

Brienne leans forward, her voice soft but dripping menace.  “It is a new alliance.  But it is VERY strong.”

Sansa senses that Yara is a bit thrown off by this new information and seizes her opportunity.  “So, now that we understand one another a bit better, Lady Greyjoy, what are you prepared to offer us for the return of your brother, Theon?”

“What do I have that you could possibly want?”

“The lands your Ironmen have taken, perhaps,” Sansa suggests. “Moat Caelin?”

Yara laughs.  “That is my father’s war! I have not the authority to promise you such things.”

Brienne pounces.  “But Lord Balon will not live forever, will he.”

“What are you getting at, big woman?”

Brienne persists.  “Lord Balon will not live forever.  Your brother, his heir, will be Lord of the Iron Islands, and you will still be there, cleaning up his spilt wine.”

“And?”

“Get your father to agree to take no further territories now.  In exchange, we will agree to send Theon home with you, and leave those territories in his hands until the time of his passing.  At which time, you will return them to House Stark.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because Theon is a… What did you call him? A stupid cunt. You could have an ally in the North, and in Tarth if you return them,” Brienne says.  “My father, like yours, will not live forever either.  And I have no brothers.  I will be Lord and Lady of Tarth.  I will take my father’s seat and be called Evenstar.  My house has no quarrel with yours.  Would it not be best for it to remain so?”

Yara gives them both a long look.

“Or else, Lady Greyjoy,” she adds, “it will be years upon years of spilt wine.”

*************************

Yara sits outside in the courtyard, smoking something out of a pipe with a long stem.  Brienne comes to her.  “Are you prepared to bid you brother to agree to this?”

Yara nods silently and blows a bit of smoke into the still, dark air.

“Do you understand what we have done tonight?  That this is not a treaty between House Tarth, House Greyjoy, and House Stark?  It is an agreement of honor, between you and me and Lady Sansa?”

“Your Lady Sansa is not very impressed with Greyjoy honor,”  Yara remarks, chewing on the pipe stem a bit.  She offers Brienne a puff, but Brienne declines.  “How did you convince her?”

“I told her that if you did not honor your word that I would come find you.”

Yara turns to give her another one of those lazy, cocky smiles, but Brienne is not joking.  “Is that right, big woman?”

“I have a strong sword arm and a long memory,” Brienne says coolly.

“A threat, then?”  Yara clucks her tongue.  “Not a way to start a friendship.”  She takes another pull on the pipe and blows the smoke toward Brienne.

Brienne wrinkles her nose at the pungent smell.  “Not a threat,” she replies.  “Merely a fact that you need to know about me if we are to be friends.”  She waves some smoke away.  “It’s rancid, what in seven hells is in that pipe?”

“A little home grown,” Yara says with a grin.  “You should try it sometime.  You look like you could use a little _something_ to relax you.”

Brienne lifts an eyebrow, barely. “I _am_ relaxed,” she deadpans.

Yara is amused for a moment but then turns serious.  “Listen, big woman. I am not my father.  And I am not my idiot brother.  It may take time for me to deliver on the promises I have made you, because I am but a woman in the world.  You know as well as I that we have to be twice as good and shout twice as loud to make ourselves heard.”

Brienne does not answer but Yara finds recognition in her gaze.

“But if you question my honor again, Maid of Tarth, I will have to shank you.”

“You wouldn’t get far,” Brienne replies.  “Good night, Lady Greyjoy.”

 

*********************

 

Robb is wary when Catelyn arrives with Stannis’s offer, though it is nearly the self same one extended by Renly before his death. He does not trust a man who consorts with witches, nor one who would murder his own brother. He asks her what she would advise him to do.

“When it was Renly, I was prepared to counsel you to take it.”

“But?”

“You must keep your own counsel on this. The witch has compromised my advice by offering me something in return for delivering you as an ally. I can only tell you what they have said, and trust you to rely on your own wisdom.”

Robb is frustrated. Where was her trust in his wisdom when she traded away Jamie Lannister? “What did she offer you, then?”

“The impossible.” Catelyn looks at him with grave seriousness, eyes roiling with … Fear? Hope? The intensity of it is unsettling to him.

Robb can only imagine a small handful of things which would so shake his mother’s natural steadiness. “So Stannis will help me in exchange for my fealty. And his witch says Frey will murder me if I ask him for help.  Do you think this is true?”

“I do not know if she truly saw it, but she has seen… other things.  Things that she could not know.”

“And what does your knight think of it?  Will you bid her to abandon her oath to kill Stannis?”

“No.  But I have told him of it.”

Robb is incredulous.  “And what did he say?”

“He… found it funny, I think.”

Robb fiddles with a heavy brass paperweight, in the shape of a wolf, which is sitting astride the map of the Seven Kingdoms on the table in front of him.  “Why would you tell him?”

“If I brokered this alliance, and did not tell him, and she killed him, it would be treachery.  If I have told him of it, and he laughs it off because she is a woman, and she kills him, it is… unfortunate.”

“I notice you don’t include her not succeeding in the list of possible outcomes,” he remarks dryly.

“I’ve seen her fight,” Catelyn replies with unwavering confidence.  Her tone softens.  “And I know her heart.  She is motivated by her oath, and a desire to clear her name.  There are those who still maintain she took Renly’s life.”

Robb thinks this over.  “And so… if she were to succeed, what happens to the Iron Throne?”

“That depends on who is left standing.”

 


	8. Queen of My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The steamiest chapter in this entire story, in which Catelyn & Brienne explore a new side of themselves. Enjoy. :)

Catelyn is not especially pleased with her daughter’s decision to accept Brienne’s deal with House Greyjoy.  “I do not trust them.  Balon is a turncloak, as is his son Theon.”

Sansa shows her the written agreement, which Yara had bid Theon to sign in exchange for his freedom, stating that those territories which had been taken would be returned upon Balon’s death.  Catelyn is not entirely placated, but agrees that it may have been the best course of action for the moment.  She is not convinced that the Greyjoy daughter will be successful in swaying her father to stop any further incursions, if she even has any inclination to do so, but decides that if Balon continues the war, it would be possible to eventually seek aid from Stannis. And while Brienne had only been bluffing (she had no idea whether Selwyn would send men if she asked for them), she felt it was possible that her father would honor her promise for aid if it came to that.

Catelyn then explains to Brienne what she has done in her dealings with Stannis.  Brienne is momentarily displeased, as she fears Stannis may send one of his shadow assassins for her, but Catelyn says,  “He entirely dismisses the threat you pose, because you are a woman.  As I expected.  So, as it happens, I need not lie to him, nor ask you to break your oath.”

Brienne chews this over for a moment, and then decides that Catelyn’s move was both honorable and exceedingly clever.

“I swore to you that I would not keep you from him.  And I gave you my word that I would never ask you to do anything that would bring you dishonor,” Catelyn reminds her.  “I could not ask you to break a vow.”

Brienne gathers her into an embrace and kisses her.  “You are as wise as you are beautiful, your grace.”

Catelyn smiles.  “I am,” she whispers between kisses, “no queen.”

Brienne unpins Catelyn’s hair and watches with immeasurable pleasure as it falls around her face.  “I cannot hear you, your grace.”  She tilts Catelyn’s head back and begins to kiss her neck.

Catelyn gives herself over to this for a moment, sighing at the warmth of Brienne’s mouth on her skin.  “I am no queen,” she whispers again, hanging on to Brienne’s hips to keep herself steady on her feet.

“You are _my_ queen,” Brienne insists softly.  “And I serve at your pleasure, and live to follow your command.”  She takes Catelyn’s hand and brings it to her lips.  “I am yours.  Please, I beg you… command me.”  She stares at Catelyn.

Catelyn’s eyebrows lift a bit. “And you will do as I command?”

“Whatever you wish,” Brienne answers.

Catelyn’s lips curl into a slow, delicious smile.  Something inside of her is excited at the idea of a lover whom she so desires, begging to be commanded, pleading to fulfill her wishes without condition. She extricates herself from the embrace and lowers herself into a great soft chair. She commands her beautiful knight to disrobe, and watches with tremendous delight as she does so. Naked, she is a thing to behold. Tall, pale, broad shouldered, strong, almost boyish hips; her raw power is breathtaking, made all the more so for the parts of her that are soft; her small, round breasts, and the warm, wet place between her legs which Catelyn so loves to kiss.

“You are perfect,” she declares.

Brienne flushes a little.  She wonders if she will ever really become used to Catelyn looking at her with such unchecked desire.

“Perfect,” she says again. “Exactly as you are, you are perfect. Not one thing about you would I change. You are unlike any other in the world, a thing that the old gods have made precisely and only for me.”

Brienne feels shy suddenly. Her heart races and she is aware that her cheeks are not the only part of her that is blushing.

“Put on your cloak and sword belt for me,” Catelyn says impulsively. She is not sure why she wants this.

Brienne obliges, and stands before Catelyn naked but for her cloak and belt, long sword hanging at her side. “Is this to your liking, my queen?”

“The Seven be praised!” Catelyn’s eyes dance, her hand goes to cover her mouth and she forgets to breathe for a moment. “It is,” she finally says approvingly. “You are a most beautiful gift, my Lady Commander,” she goes on, “and I love you as fiercely as I am capable of doing.”

Brienne, overwhelmed, drops to her knees at Catelyn’s feet. “My sweet, beautiful Cat, queen of my heart…” she whispers, kissing Catelyn’s hands with worshipful passion.

Catelyn cups Brienne’s face in her hands and tilts it up, gazing down at her adoringly. “Then move my skirts aside, my precious knight, and show your queen the depth of your love.”

Brienne does as she has been commanded. On her knees before the chair, she is at an ideal height to lift her lady’s dress, lean forward and begin planting warm, moist kisses on the soft, creamy insides of her thighs.

Catelyn sinks lower into the chair and sighing happily, stretches one leg over the side of it to better open herself to these attentions. “Do you like my taste?” she asks softly, knowing the answer already.

“I love nothing better, your grace,” Brienne breathes, plunging in with her tongue.  Catelyn is all salty sweetness, soft and slippery against her mouth, and she moans at the feel of it, and at the feel of Catelyn’s hands, fingers entwined in her hair, drawing and pressing her further in.  Her own thighs are trembling as she kneels before her, listening to her Cat’s sweet sighs in response to her efforts.

Catelyn leans back for several minutes of this, her pleasure mounting with each hot stroke of her love’s tongue.  When she feels as though she is drawing too close to a blistering-hot climax, she bids her to stop.  She looks lovingly upon Brienne, leans down to kiss her, tastes herself upon her lips, and then after a moment of pause, whispering sweet, hot things in her ear, bids her to continue.  She repeats this process a few times, until they are both aching.

When she stops her again, Brienne groans, “Please, let me finish you.”

Catelyn strokes her cheek with one finger, which then slips down to Brienne’s lips and into her mouth, where Brienne sucks on it hungrily for a moment.  “In due time, my love.  Now go and take your place in my bed.”

Brienne rises.

“Walk slowly,” Catelyn commands, her voice seeming to come from some deep, smoky place in her chest.  “I want to savor you a moment.”

Brienne walks slowly toward the bed, cloak thrown back over her shoulders.  Catelyn dwells for a moment in the sheer pleasure of watching her move across the room, and then reclining her powerful, mostly-unclothed form on the bed.  Catelyn then rises, and makes her way over to where Brienne lies, awaiting her.  She instantly feels a wave of tenderness; Brienne has made a gift of herself, and Catelyn wants nothing more than to accept it, to be the mistress that Brienne’s heart craves.

Smiling, she leans down and kisses Brienne’s mouth for a long, delirious moment.  Then she moves down and begins kissing her neck, her shoulders, her chest.  Brienne’s hands slide up to tug at the strings of Catelyn’s gown and begin to unfasten them, but Catelyn firmly plucks her hands away and places them at her sides.  “Not until I command it.”

Brienne purses her lips, but cannot argue.  Not when Catelyn’s lips are trailing around her nipple, lightly tasting and nipping at it.  Instinctively, though, after a moment, her hands slide up Catelyn’s body again, over her bosom, fingers slipping inside her collar.  Catelyn brushes her hands away again, and says, again, “Not until I command it.”

Catelyn’s fingers are trailing along her thighs, her lips still lingering at her breast, and Brienne is doing her best to restrain herself but cannot.  “Cat…” she whispers, her hands sliding up again, tugging at her gown.

Catelyn smiles wickedly and removes her hands again.  “Since you cannot listen….”  she says.  She produces a couple of silks from beside the bed, and takes Brienne’s wrist.  She ties the one end of the silk around it, not tightly enough to cause pain, but firmly.  Brienne’s heart is pounding now.

“What are you doing, your grace?”  she asks.

Catelyn takes the other end of the silk and fastens it to the headboard.  “Making certain that you obey my command,” she purrs.

Brienne lies very still, allowing Catelyn to fasten a second silk to her other wrist and tie that to the headboard too.  She feels she is about to learn something new, and she watches Catelyn with intense interest and hunger.  Her lady’s eyes are gentle, her tone is playful and throaty with lust, and Brienne knows that she is safe, despite being tied to the bed.  “What now, my queen?” she asks, her eyes smoldering.

“Now I will have my way with you,”  Catelyn decides, after looking her naked body over for a moment.  She begins to attend to Brienne’s body with her hands and mouth, drawing soft cries of pleasure from her at every turn.  Brienne struggles a little against her bonds, wanting to be able to hold Catelyn, to stroke and touch her as she does these things, but Catelyn tells her with pretend sternness that she must behave and lie still.

Catelyn reaches down and slips her fingers inside of her, only just a little.  Brienne moans and thrusts her hips, trying to will Catelyn’s fingers deeper.  “Do you want more?”  Catelyn asks.

“Yes,”  Brienne pants.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, my queen.”

Catelyn continues to tease Brienne, softly running her fingers around the opening.  “Are you mine?”

“I have always been yours, my queen.”

Catelyn smiles and obliges her by sliding her fingers in deeper, stroking them in and out against Brienne’s thrusting hips.  Brienne’s mind is reeling and the heat between her legs is growing as Catelyn draws her pleasure out.  She has never felt so free, strangely, even as she strains against her silks.  She has never trusted someone so much that she would abide being bound in this way, vulnerable to the whims of another.  In this moment, she feels intensely that she belongs to Catelyn.

“Do what you will with me, my queen,” she breathes.  “I am yours.”

“All mine?” Catelyn presses, continuing to stroke her fingers slowly in and out.

“All of me,” Brienne whispers, gazing at her with a dizzying mix of passion, vulnerability, love, longing, worship, surrender… She has never felt anything even close to this.  She has never seen anyone or anything look as stunningly beautiful as Catelyn is right now, looking down upon her, clothed in both rich garments and incredible power. Her heart feels as if it is beating out a hymn in her chest. “All of me, my queen. My heart, my body, my sword…”

“Your sex?” Catelyn asks softly.  “Does this also belong to me?”

Brienne can only nod dumbly.

Catelyn leans down and kisses the soft, quivering pink flesh, running her tongue up and down its full length.  Brienne whimpers, so she does it again.  “Yes,” she murmurs, “it is mine.”  She continues to caress Brienne as she sits up and says, “And now, my love, I am going to claim it.”

Brienne draws a deep breath.  “Thank you,” she sighs.

Catelyn lifts her skirts, rearranges Brienne’s legs, and is soon sitting between them, her thighs locked in, her wet, pulsing sex pressed to Brienne’s.  She is still clothed, and is aware of the rush that it gives her to have this great, strong woman so utterly willing to make herself powerless before her.  She grips onto Brienne’s sword belt and leans back, using the belt to support herself at the perfect angle to feel all of Brienne with all of herself.  Brienne is moaning helplessly, grinding against Catelyn and sighing, “Yes… yes…”

“Do you want to be free?”  Catelyn asks, rolling her hips against Brienne and feeling her delicious wetness.

“No,” Brienne sighs.  “Oh gods….”

“You do not want to be released?”

“No,” she moans.  “Please finish me, your grace.”

“Good girl,”  Catelyn says softly, and stops for a moment, letting go of the belt with one hand to stroke Brienne’s chest with one finger, very delicately.  Then she resumes her slow, deliberate grinding movements, feeling herself slipping against every bit of Brienne, relishing every shiver of pleasure.  When they finish, it swells up all at once, hot and sweet, flooding every part of them with aching joy.  They tremble and quake, and give wordless cries, and moan each others’ names until the wave slowly subsides.  Catelyn slides up beside her and they share a long, deep kiss.  Only then does she release Brienne from the bonds, and they embrace.  Brienne has no words for this feeling, but she holds her Catelyn more tightly than she ever has.  Cat feels this, and is moved by it, suddenly dying to be closer to her.  She wriggles free of her gown and wraps herself around Brienne, marveling anew at the softness of her skin.

“You gave me power and I took it,” she says after a few minutes of lying together.

Brienne gives an exhausted half smile.  “Because I trusted you with it.”

“And do you still?”

“More than ever.”

They kiss deeply.  Catelyn looks at her intently, still considering what has just happened between them.  “I have never seen you look at me the way you did just now.”

Brienne runs a hand down Catelyn’s back.  “I have never felt so strongly that I belonged to you.  I gave you power, and you took it, and all you did with it was love me all the more.”

They kiss some more.  Brienne tastes herself on Catelyn’s lips, breathes deeply of her breath, fragrant of sex and sage, nearly loses herself in it.  She pulls back.

“Cat, I am yours.  For the rest of my life.  I care not for the witch or her promises, I have no need of sorcery to bind me to you.  I care not whether there are words for this love of ours.  You are my lady, the queen of my heart, and will always be so.”

Catelyn’s eyes well up.  “Swear to me that you will never leave.”

“I swear it.”

They kiss until sleep comes to their exhausted bodies, holding onto each other with everything they have.


	9. Battle Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next few chapters are a difficult read. Several people die. There is much sadness and violence. But hang in there.

Some men are born for war.  Some only think they are.  It is equal parts blood sport and cold calculation, and those who are best at it are those who are capable of doing both at once.  Robb Stark’s string of risky gambits has paid off so far, but at Casterly Rock, his luck runs out.  He decides that while Stannis’s men are fighting their way through Lannister lines in the outer gates, he and a smaller band will break through, hopefully unnoticed, make their way in through a side entrance, and confront Tyrion Lannister in his father’s war room and end the entire matter right then and there.  Except, he does not find Tyrion Lannister in the war room of Casterly Rock.

He finds Ser Jamie, who has been effectively banished there by his father for not escaping Stark captivity quickly enough.  And while Ser Jamie is not everything he was in his prime, he is still Jamie Lannister.  He still cuts Robb down.  “I am doing you a favor by killing you,” he says with a faint, sad smile.  “I spent a year rotting in your cage and then, when I returned home, everything I had before was lost to me; my job, my love, and my father’s respect.  You may thank me in the afterlife for sparing you such pain,” he says, as he runs him through.

He briefly considers Brienne.  He knows well that her lady’s grief will run deep at this.  He knows Brienne will suffer in kind for it.  “I am sorry, my friend,” he whispers to her, wherever she may be, as he watches Robb die.

Stannis withdraws quickly when the word goes up that Robb is dead.  The wild young wolf is no good to him now, and he must return to Dragonstone with what little he has left.

Jamie orders Robb’s body cleaned and sent home to Winterfell in as honorable a fashion as possible.  He is placed in a casket, drawn by horses, with his Stark banner spread across him, and his crown set atop his chest.  There is no regret in Jamie’s heart for killing him, but if only in respect to Brienne, he sees fit to give the young would-be king the dignity of being sent home properly.

 

**********************

 

Brienne is in the courtyard of Winterfell, teaching Rickon to swing a broom handle like a sword.  He laughs and rains several blows on her armor; she drops to one knee, pretending to howl in pain.  He swings the broom handle some more and she gently taps his chest and knocks him into the dirt.  He laughs even harder.  She rises and pulls him to his feet.  “Now Rickon, I think it is time for your studies.  I do not think your mother would forgive me if I let you escape them a moment more.”  Rickon pouts but collects himself and skips inside to do as he is told.

Brienne finds Arya lingering behind her.  She hadn’t noticed her a moment ago.

“So you’ll teach Rickon to fight, but not me?” she questions.

Brienne places her hands on her hips.  “Is that your way of asking me to show you a few things?”

Arya’s eyes dart back and forth between Brienne’s face and the sword hanging at her side. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she says finally, trying not to sound too sheepish.

Brienne relaxes her stance, and in a few moments she is drilling Arya on some new sword strokes. “No… More wrist… Better… Follow through… You’re lunging like a girl, keep your shoulder up…”

Catelyn comes upon them and smiles a little at the sight of it. “I am sorry to disrupt your lesson, Lady Commander. I hope my daughter is not teaching you anything too difficult.”

“Only patience, my lady,” Brienne deadpans. She slaps Arya on the back. “Enough for today. Well done.”

Arya glances back and forth between them. She gives a quick bob of her head, not quite a nod or a bow. “Mother,” she says quietly, and walks away.

“You’re welcome,” Brienne calls after her.

Arya makes an obscene gesture over her shoulder.

Brienne turns to Catelyn. “You see? We are becoming friends already.”

Cat smiles for a moment, but her face is shadowed by nervousness.  “Have we gotten no word from the front yet?”

“No, my lady.  No doubt we shall hear something soon.”

A little while later comes the sound of horses’ hooves, and the wagon drawing Robb’s body comes rolling through the gates of Winterfell.  When Catelyn sees it, she collapses into the dirt, sobbing, howling with rage and grief.  She sees her eldest son, the image of his brave father, ripped from her, and her last chance for retribution stolen away.  Sansa and Arya run to her side, but she is inconsolable.  Brienne has to resort to picking her up and carrying her to her chambers where she lies in her bed, wracked by sobs, for the next several hours.  Brienne, Sansa and Arya by turns come to try and comfort her, but it is to no avail.  This is a thousand times worse than when they took Ned from her.  This is her flesh and blood, her boy, her great hope.  It is also more real than Ned’s death.  She heard the news, but never saw his body, nor his head on the pike in King’s Landing.

Brienne finally resorts to sending for the Maester.  He brings a bottle of something which he dispenses very carefully onto a handkerchief and holds under Catelyn’s nose.  Her sobbing stops, and she falls quickly into a restless sleep.  Seeing that her mother is in no condition to arrange anything, Sansa begins the process of burial plans.

***********

Catelyn does not rise from her bed until the time comes to bury her son. She is pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She does not speak. The Stark children huddle around her and she is almost entirely supported by Brienne. The sky is grey, but it does not give them the release of opening up to rain on them. The wind bites colder than days previous, the faintest breath of winter to come. Some words are said, some drums are played, and Robb’s body is lowered into the deep grave to lie among the rest of his ancestors, the first men of the North.

As they close the earth over him, shovel by shovelful, Cat’s sobbing begins anew. Her cries are the sound of a soul being wrenched from its body and screaming to the heavens. Brienne wraps both arms tightly around Catelyn to keep her from flinging herself in. “He is gone, Cat,” she says as soothingly as she can. She remembers Cat’s words to her after Renly’s death and repeats them: “You serve nothing and no one by following him into the earth.”

Brienne drags Catelyn back to her chamber and stays at her side as she lies in bed, weeping at length, clutching Robb’s crown. Catelyn weeps until she passes out from exhaustion. Brienne feels powerless, useless. Her heart breaks to see her strong, brave Cat so wrecked. She thinks of a thousand things she could do but dismisses each one as stupid, pointless.

When Catelyn wakes the next morning, Brienne does not recognize the look in her eyes. They are cold, steely, and they seem to look past Brienne, or through her, rather than at her .

“It is morning, Cat,” she says quietly. “Do you think you might be able to join your children for breakfast?”

Catelyn looks through her, unspeaking.  When she finally does speak, her voice is hoarse and raspy from all of the crying she has been doing.  “You should have been fighting beside him,” she croaks.

Brienne knows that this must be simply her grief talking.  _She is angry and in pain,_ she thinks, _and looking for someone to blame._ “Cat, we agreed that I would not fight that battle,” she reminds her gently.

“Yes, for your precious honor,” she croaks in reply.  “And now I have lost my son.”

Brienne tries not to let herself be wounded by this.  She kneels beside the bed and gazes into Catelyn’s eyes, trying to find the woman she loves, and is distressed that she cannot recognize her behind all this rage and hatred.  “I am so sorry, Catelyn. I would have done anything to spare you this pain.”

“Go away from me.”

Brienne flinches, but does not move.

“I said, GO AWAY FROM ME!”  Catelyn cries.  “GO AWAY AND DO NOT COME BACK TO ME UNTIL THEY ARE ALL DEAD.”

Brienne, startled, jumps to her feet.  “What?”

“ALL OF THEM,” Catelyn cries, her voice sounding as if it is full of broken glass.  “Stannis, the witch, the Lannisters, Joffrey, Littlefinger, Theon Greyjoy, all of them.  GO AWAY FROM ME AND DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL YOU HAVE KILLED EVERY LAST ONE.”

Brienne backs away slowly.  “My lady, you are not yourself,” she says, working hard to contain her own tears.  “I will leave you be.”

Brienne goes down into the courtyard and sits miserably in the cold, knowing that there is nothing right now that will ease Catelyn’s pain.  She feels that her precious Cat has slipped away from her, lost in such grief and anger that she cannot be retrieved right now.

She finds her horse, and saddles him.  “Come, Peregrine,” she says with such sorrow she does not recognize her own voice.  “Our lady has given us a command.”

Sansa has heard everything.  She watches Brienne ride away, her heart aching; for Robb, for herself, for her mother, and for the brave warrior who loves her mother so.

 

**********************

 

Brienne begins her deadly trail at Dragonstone.  That line of Florents and Tyrlwhites is not so impermeable, as it turns out.  She informs Stannis that her lady has sent her to kill him for failing to protect her son.  She informs him that she will take pleasure in killing him because he murdered his brother, the one man in the Seven Kingdoms who had ever been kind to her.  No man should murder his own brother.  She is fulfilling an oath and dispensing justice.  When her sword goes clean through his heart, it is wholly unsatisfying.  She she stalks the halls, her blade dripping a trail of the blood of Stannis, First of His Name, along the floor behind her.  She bellows the name of the witch over and over, kicking open one door after another.

When she finds Melisandre, the witch is waiting for her, standing before a firepit, herbs and entrails and other unidentifiable substances spread on a table beside her.  “I wondered when you would arrive,” she says calmly.

“I have killed your king,” Brienne says, “and now I am come for you.”

The witch regards her with a piercing stare.  “If you do, Brienne of Tarth, I can never fulfill my promise to you.  Do you not still wish to give your love a child?”

“My love,” Brienne hisses, “will not see me until you are dead!”

“She may change her heart on this if she awakes with a swelling belly in the morning,” Melisandre counters. She is cool as evening frost.

Brienne stares at her with murder in her eyes. This witch also killed Renly, more so even than Stannis did.

Melisandre continues soothingly. “In the dungeons of Dragonstone, we hold Robert Baratheon’s bastard son, Gendry. He has the blood of kings in him. That blood is all I need to complete my spell and give your lady a child. Go, warrior maid, and fetch him for me. Together we shall work this charm and your lady shall wake with child and be aching for you to return to her.”

Brienne considers her for a long, tense moment. She holds her sword up. “This sword is covered with the blood of Stannis. Will that do, witch?”

Melisandre smiles, the light from the flickering flames leaping along her red hair. “Come and pour it into the fire, brave hero, and then go home to your love.” The shadows on her face shift with the flames, and her face almost seems to shift along with them.

Brienne steps closer to the fire pit. She raises her blade and tilts it down at an angle so that the blood of Stannis collects in rivulets and begins to run slowly down its length.

The witch watches the blood inching down the sword. Brienne watches the witch. “At last,” she says.

“At last?” Melisandre asks.

Brienne tilts the sword and plunges it into Melisandre’s chest. “At last my oath is fulfilled.” She pushes the witch to the floor and watches the life bleed out of her.

*************

When she arrives at Casterly Rock, Jamie is not surprised to see her. “I imagine you are not here to share a pint and swap war stories . Has your lady sent you to kill me, old friend?”

“She has, Ser Jamie.” Brienne looks at him; he seems saddened, half-himself, and she feels stupid even standing here. “I do not want to do this. Please, get your things and go. Go find somewhere to hide, out past Dorne, or in Slaver’s Bay. Don’t come back. Don’t be found.”

Jamie looks at her sympathetically. “Why are you doing this?”

“My lady wants blood. I have already killed Stannis and his witch.”

Jamie furrows his brow. “But … Why are you here and not in Tarth?”

Brienne is confused.

Jamie realizes the problem. “Then… You do not know?”

“Know what?”

“Your father, Brienne. Selwyn has taken ill. They say he has not much time.”

Brienne is suspicious.

“I only just heard of it,” he says . “You have my word, it is truth.”

Brienne digests this. Finally, she speaks. “Then I will go to him. Thank you, Ser Jamie.”

“Ah,” he sighs, “call me Kingslayer once. For old times’ sake.”

She cannot expend the emotional energy required to scowl at him. “Today, that is my name.” She looks at him. “Run, Ser Jamie. Run and hide. Don’t come back. Don’t be found.”


	10. Unhappy Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More sadness. More death. But then, a light at the end of the tunnel.

Brienne arrives in Tarth to find her father in rapidly deteriorating condition. He is propped up in his bed, wheezing as he tries to breathe with his flooded lungs. A Maester and a group of nurses quietly attend to him, feeding him warm liquids, changing the poultices around his chest and neck, heating stones in the fireplace to place at his feet. Brienne comes to his bed and takes his hand.

“My lady,” the Maester says gently, “I must warn you, your father is… not himself.”

 _There’s a lot of that going around just now_ , she thinks.

But the Maester’s assessment is accurate. Selwyn’s mood careens from serene to angry, from affectionate to resentful, within moments of each other. “I am glad to see you before I go, my daughter.”

” Yes, my lord.”

“It is a pity that my line ends with you,” he says bitterly.

“I shall remake it,” she vows. ” I shall be Lord of Tarth, as you have been.”

Selwyn coughs up some clear liquid. “And who will be your lady,” he wheezes, “Loras Tyrell?”

Brienne looks at him, her heart feeling strangely hollow. It is unlike him to say cruel things.

“Father, all of my life I have tried to be worthy of your name.”

“I know… I know ..,” he whispers. “You work so hard… You are a good daughter.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

He coughs again. “I wish your brother had not died,” he forces the words out. “Who will carry on my name now?”

Brienne realizes that her chance to continue his bloodline is lying on a floor in Dragonstone with a rather large stab wound to the chest.

“I shall carry on your name,” she says, though she does not know how. “I shall make Tarth even greater than she is now. I will not disappoint you, Father.”

Selwyn coughs for a very long time at this. The nurses bustle around him, trying to find something to make it subside. “I did not teach you to rule,” he says, and she cannot tell if he regrets this. “I always thought I would have another son.”

“The job is mine,” she says firmly. “And I shall be as good as you have been.”

“What do you know of ruling?” He demands, suddenly angry, hacking and coughing again for another distressingly long time. The Maester and nurses continue to bustle around with increased urgency.

Brienne stands aside to give them unfettered access to him. She watches with a sadness so deep, she cannot even show it for fear it would overwhelm her.

“What do you know of ruling?” he demands again when his coughing subsides. “I AM EVENSTAR.”

He is wracked with coughing, spitting up an alarming amount of clear liquid, and then blood. One of the nurses comes to her and tries to escort her out, saying softly, “My lady, you may not wish to be here for this.”

“I am not leaving,” she insists, her eyes hot with tears that do not come.

“I am Evenstar,” he manages one last time. And then in a final heaving of blood and fluid, he is gone.

She looks at him, desolate. “You _were_ Evenstar.”

*************

The sounds of Winterfell are muted as life there continues on. Sansa does her best to soldier through her own grief to care for everyone else, most especially her mother, whom she has never seen like this. Catelyn barely sleeps. She does not eat. She does not speak. She drinks too much. _She needs her heart lifted_ , Sansa thinks, _in a way that I cannot do._

A hooded figure rides through the gates on a bright, chilly afternoon. Arya jumps up on a stone wall in the courtyard to get a better vantage point. She is, by default, the woman at arms of Winterfell since Catelyn bafflingly sent Brienne away. The figure dismounts.

“State your business,” she calls sharply, clutching her bow, arrow at the ready.

The figure pushes his hood back. It is Jamie Lannister. He raises both hands in a gesture of surrender. “A word, Lady Stark.”

Arya looses an arrow into his shoulder. He drops to his knees in pain. “I should have expected that, I suppose,” he groans.

“That’s for Bran,” she says coldly. “Now tell me what you want before I give you one for Robb.”

He looks down at his bleeding shoulder, then back up at Arya. “I come with some news of our mutual friend, Brienne of Tarth.”

Arya lowers her bow.

Jamie is panting, his breathing thick with pain. “She has killed Stannis and his witch. But now… Lord Selwyn is dying. She has gone to Tarth to say goodbye.” He looks up at Arya. “I thought perhaps that… Your mother should know.”

Arya curses. She wants to cut him down where he stands. But she cannot bring herself to do it. Too much time around that damned Brienne. “My mother cannot know you are here. I would advise you go get patched up, and then run and hide. Take your Lannister gold, and find yourself a villa someplace where they don’t speak the common tongue. And don’t come back.”

Jamie grimaces, and somewhere buried in it is a wry smile. “What is it with you women?”

“Get out of here before I stick another of these in your hide.”

*************

Sansa, after digesting this new information, devises a plan. “You must get Mother to Tarth,” she tells Arya.

“How am I supposed to do that?” Arya complains. “She won’t even talk to _you_.”

“She is in a very dark place,” Sansa says. “You might be better able to reach her than any of us right now.”

“And what will you be doing while I am doing that?”

“I will be going to the Iron Islands.”

“Why?”

“Arya, you must trust me. Do you?”

Arya cannot help thinking just now that Sansa sounds like their mother. She nods. “Alright. I will do what I can.”

************

Catelyn sits as she has been for a week, lost in a fog of pain and hate, numbing herself with wine, with only partial success. She sits at a table in her chamber, turning Robb’s crown over and over in her hands. She knows, somewhere inside, that she needs to let at least her children in. That they need her. She knows it was madness to send Brienne from her side. But she is in a place of such darkness, it is not right that anyone should dwell in it with her.

Arya finds her like this. She recognizes the cold fog in her mother’s eyes, the curtain she has thrown up to separate herself from the world, and it saddens her. She has always thought of Catelyn as stronger than that. The thought of losing the part of her that is warm, and generous, causes Arya to choke up a little. She shakes her head to clear that away and sits across the table from her.

“Mother.”

Catelyn does not look up from her cups. “Please leave me, Arya.”

“Not this time.”

Catelyn glances up for a moment but says nothing.

Arya barrels forward. “Mother, do you know how many men I’ve killed?”

Catelyn shakes her head.

“Neither do I.” She sees a small reaction in her mother’s face, so she presses on. “I learned to kill, after Father was killed. I’ve killed in self defense. I’ve killed to protect weaker folk. I’ve killed in vengeance. I’ve killed because I was hungry and needed to eat.” Arya takes her mother’s hands. “I’m good at killing. It is who I am now.”

Catelyn looks at her daughter. For the first time, she fully understands the person Arya has become. She is surprised that her heart has any room left in it for more sorrow.

“If you wanted an assassin to rain revenge on the Seven Kingdoms, Mother, you should have sent me, not that soft hearted knight of yours,” Arya tells her quietly.

Catelyn begins to shed tears, soundlessly. Arya searches her face, hoping that she is succeeding in reaching her. “Mother, none of the men I’ve killed has brought father back. And none of the deaths you ask of Brienne will bring Robb back. It’s too late for me, but for you and Brienne? I think not.”

Catelyn clutches Arya’s hands and cries bitterly. “I have lost her…”

Arya gets up and comes to her, wrapping her arms around her. “Mother, Selwyn Tarth is on his deathbed. We’ve got word that Brienne has gone to be with him.”

“What shall I do?” Catelyn is sobbing with abandon now, and Arya holds onto her.

Arya taps her little sword. “My steel is here, mother.” She places a hand on her mother’s back and traces a finger down her spine. “Yours is here. And you are stronger than any of us.”

Catelyn looks up at her. Arya is relieved to see grief in her face, instead of the cold fog. She pulls out the last tool she can think of.

“Father would want you to be happy, safe and cared for, and …”  Arya frowns guiltily.  “…I know I have not been very kind to her, but I’m not so stupid.  I see perfectly well that Brienne does that for you, when you let her.”  She is genuinely ashamed now.  “I wish I had not given you such misery for it.”

Catelyn grips her daughter’s hand.  She knows that Arya is right.  She imagines that if Ned were still alive, that he would have found in Brienne a kindred soul.  Catelyn has spent so much time trying to separate her love for Brienne into something completely unlike her love for Ned, that this is the first time that she has ever considered how similar they actually are.

“Come, Mother. Let’s get ourselves a little boat. Tarth is well away, we need to hurry if we will be there in time to pay our respects to Lord Selwyn.”

 


	11. Evenstar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn & Brienne are reunited. Sansa makes a surprisingly daring gambit.

Brienne stands on the promenade, a crowd gathered behind her, watching the small fleet of white funeral ships as they sail out to dedicate Selwyn’s body to the sea. Her armor is polished to a keen shine, and she now wears her father’s blue cloak and carries his sword. Trumpets sound, and cannons fire, flowering white smoke clouds above the water. She has her father’s seat of power now, but she is left with an exquisite emptiness over the whole thing. She has no father anymore. And she has no Catelyn to assure her with her presence, or to hold her as she breaks down in private.

People around her address her as Evenstar. It is strange and lonely. She goes to bed depleted, dreams of nothing.

Morning’s light comes in grey and weak. She awakes to see Catelyn sitting beside her bed. She looks pale, tired, and wan… But her wide blue eyes are looking at her with great tenderness. “Good morning, Evenstar,” she says.

Brienne cannot believe her eyes. “Am I dreaming you, my lady?”

Catelyn shakes her head. “I am here.” She takes Brienne’s hand. “My brave, good knight, my dearest love, I am so sorry I pushed you away from me. I am so sorry that I asked you to-”

Brienne sits up and puts a finger to Cat’s lips. “Cat. I know. It is done, and you are here now. That is all that matters.” Brienne is still absorbing the fact that she is here. “Come into my bed, please.”

Catelyn slips from her gown and into Brienne’s bed. They lie face to face for a long time, hands clasped between them, gazing on each others’ face, drinking in each others’ presence. Brienne kisses her ever so gently. “I thought I had lost you,” she whispers.

Catelyn’s heart is bursting. “I swear to you, Brienne, I will never do this to you again.”

They continue to kiss softly, caressing each other’s hair, face, neck, shoulders. It is so slow, so gentle, as they mend each other’s broken places, just as they did at the very start of their love. This is something they know how to do for each other, and they do it for a long time.

Brienne slides a hand down Catelyn’s back, stopping to rest at the small of it. Of Catelyn’s many beautiful curves, it is one of her favorites. She gazes at her. “Cat… May I… give you pleasure, my lady? If you feel you cannot, I -”

Catelyn puts a finger to her lips and hushes her. “I have never made love to a storm lord before,” a small smile lighting her weary face.

They melt into one another, kissing and stroking each other to a gentle flood of pleasure. It is like coming home. Right now, neither can imagine anything sweeter.

“What brought you back to me?” Brienne asks when they are done and lying tangled in each other.

“Believe it or not, it was Arya.”

Brienne smiles a little. “I told you we were friends.”

 

***************

 

When Sansa arrives at Pyke, Yara Greyjoy is more than a little surprised to see her. “My father still lives, Lady Stark,” she drawls, “despite conclusions one might draw from his appearance.”

Sansa smiles a bit. “Perhaps, but Lord Selwyn does not. Our friend Brienne is now the Evenstar. I thought you might wish to join me in coming to pay respects.”

Yara studies Sansa’s face.  “And is that all?”

Sansa smiles.  “Very good, Lady Greyjoy.  No, it is not.  I also have a proposal for you….”

 

************

 

Brienne is suddenly thrown into ruling, and it is a strange experience.  She has spent her life serving and giving of herself, and it is an odd thing to be on the other side of it.  She is deeply grateful to have Catelyn beside her.  Catelyn falls into the role of lady of the castle so easily and naturally, it is as if they have been doing this for years.  Brienne is restless and hates sitting in endless hearings and council meetings, but Catelyn’s calming presence keeps her steady through it.  The people of Tarth discuss the appearance of the Widow Stark, and the rather free rein that Brienne has given her, but conclude that she is simply supporting her former shield out of gratitude for her service.

Brienne and Cat discuss what is to be done, now that Robb is gone.  Bran cannot lead an army, Stannis is gone, and so it seems that there is no war on the crown any longer.  While Catelyn took very much to heart Arya’s admonition that she should not be consumed by revenge, she still aches for justice against those who broke her family, and she is careful to draw the distinction.

When Sansa arrives with Yara Greyjoy and three longships, the only one not surprised is Arya.

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s where Sansa was going?” Catelyn demands.

Arya shrugs.  “You didn’t ask.”

Yara comes to Brienne, kneels quickly, and then throws her a friendly embrace.  “Hello, Evenstar.”  She turns to Catelyn and offers a quick bow.  “My lady.”

Brienne glances out the window at the port and sees the three longships.  Quick mental math yields that she probably has about a hundred men between them.  “Why the ships, Lady Greyjoy?  The burial was days ago.”

“Ah, well, those are not funeral ships, big woman.”

Brienne’s look is quizzical.

“You’d best ask your Lady Sansa.”

Everyone turns to Sansa, who smiles a little nervously.  “Well, I just thought… the Ironmen have really better things to do than invading Stark lands, you know?”

Yara grins.  “Rebellion against the crown is a Greyjoy speciality.”

“I spent more than a year in the Red Keep,” Sansa goes on.  “With my knowledge of it… well, I just thought perhaps a small force could perhaps accomplish what a great army like Stannis’s could not.”

Brienne is incredulous.  “Lady Sansa, you are hardly battlefield material.”

“No, I’m not at all,” she laughs, “but I know the terrain.  Quite intimately.”

Catelyn is stunned.  When did her Sansa become so confident, such a grown woman?

Sansa looks around the room.  “Greyjoy men can extract their Iron Price, and a handsome one, from the treasures of the Red Keep.  Arya, you could go and take the Lannisters down.  Brienne, you are a storm lord now, you have men who will follow your banner.  I believe it can be done.”

There is a long silence as they all consider Sansa’s plan.

Catelyn finally is the first one to speak.  “Even if it can be done, what then happens to the Iron Throne?  We cannot simply go in and kill everyone and leave the kingdom with no head beneath the crown.”

Sansa nods.  She hadn’t considered that.  “Assuming we take all the Lannisters down, who remains?  Margaery Tyrell has married Joffrey, so by rights I suppose she would be queen.”

“But if there is no heir, it will not stick,” Catelyn says.

Brienne thinks a moment.  “But Robert Baratheon had another heir,” she says suddenly.

Everyone looks at her in bewilderment.

“A bastard.  He languishes in the dungeons of Dragonstone.  The witch told me his name…”  She screws up her face a little, thinking.  “It is Gan… Gantry…?”

Arya snaps to.  “Gendry??”

“That’s it.”

“ _That’s_ why she wanted him??” Arya shouts in disbelief.

“You know him?” Brienne says, equally incredulous.

“He was my friend,”  Arya says.  “I thought I would never see him again.”

They look around the room.  It is starting to come together.  Sansa is hardly able to contain herself.  “So…?  Then tomorrow…?”

“Dragonstone,” Brienne says.

“Dragonstone,” Catelyn agrees.

And in the morning, they sail out.


	12. The Raid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ass beatings abound in a raid on The Red Keep. This is probably an unnecessary chapter but admit it, you've been missing Olenna Tyrell.

They deliver Gendry from the dungeons.  Brienne is struck by how much he looks like Renly.  Once he is retrieved, they part ways. Catelyn’s job is to spirit him into Kings Landing and make the deal with Olenna Tyrell. Marry Margaery to Gendry, swap a false Baratheon for a true one. Catelyn feels it is a risk, but Sansa has seen the sour disapproval on Olenna’s face when she talks of Joffrey and wagers that she will be happy to have someone else do the dirty work of getting rid of him. Sansa knows enough to know that while the Tyrells must be watched, they are the lesser of many evils, and they know something about running a kingdom with the proper mix of sweetness and ruthlessness. The realm will not collapse in their hands.

Catelyn and Brienne manage a brief goodbye before they part ways.  Cat’s heart is in her throat, as she has lost so many that she loved to this war already.  She takes the green silk from around her neck and ties it to the hilt of Brienne’s sword.  “See that you come home,” she insists, “and bring my daughter with you.”

Brienne is serene as she leans down and touches her forehead to Cat’s.  “By this time tomorrow, we will be celebrating.”

But they embrace as if they do not know whether she is right.

 

************

The plan is simple. Bypass the wharves. The southern cliffs hide a narrow staircase cut into the stone, known only to occasional illicit lovers and those conducting untoward business. Up the cliffs, through the Godswood. It is not lantern-lit. At night, no one will see them. Two by two, through the stables, then the kitchens. By the time the gold cloaks figure out what is happening, most of them will be dead.

Arya’s path will separate from theirs. She will slip into the upper chambers of the Red Keep, and pay visits to the names on her list. It will be strange not to fall asleep reciting them anymore.

The first two rooms yield nothing; Cersei is not there, and Margaery is alone in her bed.  She moves on to Tywin’s room.

She pushes the door open quietly only to find, to her chagrin, that Tywin is sitting at his work table with an arrow already sticking from a very fresh wound in his chest.

Tyrion Lannister wheels on her, holding a crossbow which has clearly just been discharged. “Patricide is rather a private thing, would you mind knocking first?” he says in exasperation. He is expecting Bronn. Then his eyes adjust. “Arya Stark?”

She draws her own bow and points an arrow at him. “Afraid so, imp. Looks like you’ve taken my kill.” She pauses, looking again at the nasty looking arrow sticking from Tywin’s chest. “Why?”

“It’s a long story,” he says.

 

************

 

Brienne and her men, and Yara with hers, stream quietly through the halls of the Red Keep. The servants scurry out of the way, but nobody calls for aid. Level by level, they fell the guards, working their way toward the throne room.

Brienne has a strange feeling in her gut. She leaves one of her lieutenants in charge and goes after Arya, following her trail of dead gold cloaks into the upper chambers.

She decides to try the room that she believes to be Tywin’s. She listens for a moment and hears conversation. One of the voices is Arya. She pushes the door open and walks in.

Arya sees her and becomes irritated.  “Lone assassin. Do you know what that means? It means I kill people… aLONE.”  Her bow is drawn and the arrow aimed directly at Tyrion’s head.

Tyrion nods in Brienne’s direction. “I’d normally greet you properly, whoever you are, but as you can see, I’ve got an arrow aimed at my face just now.” He does not take his eyes from Arya, who still has her bow drawn.

Brienne sees the arrow sticking out of Tywin and recognizes that it is not one of Arya’s. “Is that your arrow, Lord Tyrion?”

“Poor imp, says Tywin killed his lady friend,” Arya supplies helpfully.

Brienne nods, thinking that this is a perfectly acceptable reason to put an arrow in someone’s chest.  “You’re not to kill him.  Tie him up and move on to the next.”

Arya begins to protest.

Brienne cuts her off.  “Tywin is dead.  And Lord Tyrion is not on your list.  Your sister was clear about it.”

At this moment, the door opens yet again, and this time, it is Jamie.  He comes in with his sword drawn and spies Brienne and Arya.  “You two,” he sighs.  “Are those your men sacking the place?”

“Why are you here, Ser Jamie, and not on a boat to Dorne?” Brienne asks, drawing her own sword.

He moves slowly into the room, taking stock of the full situation.  “I came to say goodbye to my brother.”  He sees his father slumped at his desk.  “I see Arya has been doing what she does best.”

“Father had Shae killed, at the behest of your insane, murderous, drunken sister,” Tyrion explains.  “For no other reason than to break me.  So… Success. That is my arrow in him, not Lady Arya’s.”

Brienne edges forward, her blade up, not entirely sure if she is protecting Arya from Jamie or the other way around.

“Your sister is on the list,” Arya says, almost brightly.  “Would you like to tell me where she is?”

“No,” says Jamie.

“Yes,” says Tyrion.

Jamie gives Tyrion a pained look, but Tyrion is not feeling sympathetic.  “After she abused you upon your return home?  After she has been betraying you in… other ways?”

Brienne knows what Tyrion means, and that he is trying not to simultaneously reveal Jamie’s illicit relationship with his sister and then add to it the shame of her bedding other men.

“We were always at least a little shielded from her cruelty when we were younger,” Tyrion goes on, “because being being family was enough.  But not anymore.  She has descended into drink, madness and blood lust. She has become as monstrous as her son.”

 _My son,_ Jamie thinks.

Brienne begs, “Jamie, drop your sword.  Please.  I swear to you that I will keep you alive.”  She throws a glance back at Arya and says again, “ALIVE.”  Arya gives her an angry look.

Jamie starts to move forward, sword pointed at Brienne.

“Jamie, there is nowhere to go, and nothing that can stop what has been set in motion. Even if we fought now, even if you killed me,” Brienne says gently.  “You can save your brother’s life now, and I can save yours.  Tell the kingdom the truth about Joffrey, and I will see to it that you are spared.”

“Your lady will not accept it.  She has already sent you to kill me once,” he counters.

“My lady knows as well as I that your truth can legitimize everything that we do here tonight,” she replies.  “For your honor, Jamie.  For the good of the realm.  Drop your sword.”

Their eyes are locked for a long moment, nobody moving.  Arya breaks the silence finally by offering, “Or I could just put this arrow in his balls.”

Brienne gives Arya a dirty look.

Jamie curses, and drops his sword.

“Arya, guard these two, until I send a man to relieve you, and then you may continue on your rounds.”  She turns to Tyrion.  “Lord Tyrion, where would we find your sister at this hour?”

“Oh, well, probably lighting glasses of absinthe on fire and then lobbing them at peasants in the eastern courtyard.  She has a curious idea of what constitutes entertainment these days.”

 

*******************************

 

As Arya approaches the eastern courtyard, she can hear the sounds of what Tyrion had described: the sound of glasses shattering on the flagstones, the occasional shrieking of someone stomping to put out something that was suddenly aflame, and the voice of Cersei, shouting profanities at those she fails to hit.

As Arya slips closer to the balcony, she sees that Cersei has turned her focus to the trembling handmaiden in front of her. She has the girl’s wrist in a death grip with one hand and is trying to force her to drink from the flaming glass she holds in her other hand.  But she is profoundly drunk, and before Arya can take any action, she manages to spill the flaming drink on herself, lighting her skirts on fire, and then knock over the table beside her containing the nearly full bottle of absinthe, dousing herself with it.  She shrieks for help, but nobody comes.  Arya watches her burn for a moment, and then strides away.  She feels thwarted, but in some measure also relieved that the old gods still bother with dispensing justice on occasion.

Making her way back to the throne room, she comes upon Petyr Baelish.  He freezes in surprise when he sees her standing before him in the low-lit, stone corridor, and realizes that she is no longer the wild little girl he last saw, but a young lady who appears to be very well outfitted for killing.  “Arya,” he whispers, “surely there is something I can give you that will ease your ill feelings toward me.”

Those are his last words.

 

****************************

 

The real altercation comes, predictably, as the forces of Pyke and Tarth draw near to the throne room.  The gold cloaks have mustered whomever they have left and are making a stand to protect their king.  The halls outside the room are filled with the ring of steel on steel, and shouts, as the invaders press in. The stealth part of this incursion is long over.

Brienne has rejoined the fighting force and is cutting a path through the gold cloaks, to the massive doors of the throne room.  The blood is racing in her ears as she moves forward.  She knows that if she finds herself in the room with that boy king, that she will have difficulty waiting for Arya to come and slay him. She’s wanted Joffrey’s head since the day she met Sansa.

She finally breaks through, and finds him sitting on his throne with a line of gold cloaks.  Only ten of them.  This will be easy.

************

Olenna Tyrell is rather surprised to receive an unannounced visit from Catelyn Stark at this hour of the night, but she graciously allows them in, and moves to send a servant for some cheese and wine.

“Actually, Lady Olenna, I would not send your servants anywhere just now.  Not if you are at all fond of them,” Catelyn says.

“And why is that?” Olenna asks.

“The Red Keep is overrun.”

Olenna smiles curiously.  “Ah, well.  No cheese then.  In truth, you’re not missing much. Westeros cheese has been a spectacular disappointment.”  She sits down again.  “So, then.  To what do I owe the honor of a visit from the famous Catelyn Stark in the dark of night, in the middle of what appears to be a raid?”

Catelyn wastes no time. “There will be many dead before this night is done, starting with the king and most of his immediate family.”

“And you have something to do with this, I presume?”

“Yes. But know that you and yours are safe. No harm will come to your Margaery. In fact, we would like her to remain queen.”

“But they are only just married. There is no heir.”

“Olenna, the rumors are true. Joffrey is not the son of Robert, and neither are Cersei’s other children. They are all fathered by Ser Jamie. Joffrey is no Baratheon. But,” she points to Gendry, “he is.”

Olenna considers Gendry. “Who is he?”

“This is Ser Gendry, Robert’s son by a common woman, and the last of his line.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting!” Olenna exclaims. She looks at Gendry again. “Goodness but you are the image of the young King Robert, aren’t you!” She gives a half smile. “Don’t get fat, though, dear boy. You Baratheon men don’t wear it well.”

Catelyn remains cool as Olenna gets up and begins to pace about. “So you want to marry him to Margaery, is that it? Why not claim the throne for House Stark?”

“House Stark has no interest in the throne. The people love their queen, it will give continuity. And it will leave the realm in capable hands.”

Olenna claps Gendry on the shoulder. “What do you say, then, Ser Gendry? Are you ready to be king?”

“I am ready to learn,” he says humbly.

Olenna nods again. “And exactly when do I need to give you my decision, Lady Stark?”

At this moment, the bells begin to sound, the deep somber note that they play when a king has died. From the chamber window, the three of them can see a flaming arrow shoot up into the sky and explode into a red flare. “Actually, right about now, Lady Olenna,” Catelyn says.

Olenna does not bother to hide her admiration for how well Lady Stark has played the situation. “Well done, Catelyn Tully Stark. Your reputation hardly does you justice.” She turns to Gendry. “Welcome to the royal family, dear boy.”

 


	13. Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The endings our characters deserve.

The kingdom will not stay peaceful forever, but once the furor over the actions of the unlikely allies has died down, it remains so for a good long while.

Margaery had managed to make herself quite beloved before Joffrey’s death, and the people are happy to accept her remaining queen.  Gendry was not raised a royal, and the smallfolk love that they see one of themselves sitting on the throne.  He is not very popular with the Lords, but no matter.  He learns quickly under Margaery’s tutelage.  One of his first commands as king is to order all the heads removed from the pikes of Kings Landing and have them buried properly. It is a well-received decision.

A few members of the old Small Council stay on, like Varys, but it is mostly stocked with vassals and family of House Tyrell, and lords of the Riverlands and Stormlands that Sansa, Brienne, and Catelyn choose together.  After much pleading, Gendry convinces Arya to stay on and serve in his Kingsguard.  But she refuses to wear a gold cloak, instead lingering in the shadows, drifting around him and his queen like a breeze.

Balon Greyjoy, after his daughter’s successful raid upon the Red Keep, overturns tradition and names Yara his successor, over the objections of his own brothers and Theon.  But she has the loyalty of the men who have been fighting for her, and it is fierce.  She inspires the Ironmen in a way that her brother and uncles can only dream of.  When Balon dies in a flood a few years later, she takes his seat and no one dares protest.  And when she later releases Moat Caelin back to House Stark, they do not have much to say about that either.

Brienne struggles to make the other storm lords accept her rise, but she manages it.  Ser Jamie’s confession that Joffrey had been his own son lays to rest any objections to his assassination.  The War of Five Kings had been a bloody mess, many had stood behind Joffrey, many had stood for Stannis or Renly, and many wanted Stannis and Renly both dead.   In the end, most are ready to grudgingly stand behind whatever remains of House Baratheon, even if it is only Robert’s bastard.  She has proven herself in her first test.  But she knows that she could not have done it without the women she has come to trust; Sansa, Arya, Yara Greyjoy, and most of all, Catelyn.

Under Brienne’s rule, her people prosper.  She is caring, strong, generous and thoughtful; all the things she learned from watching Catelyn run Winterfell.  While Sansa and Bran remain at Winterfell (there must always be a Stark there), Catelyn sends for Rickon, who is thrilled to discover a new castle and learn what it means to dip his toes into the sea.  Months pass and Catelyn remains with Brienne at Evenfall Hall, making certain her affairs are well-run, and keeping council with her in the evenings.  Sometimes that council involves matters of law and commerce, and sometimes it involves velvet bonds and blindfolds.  Brienne is learning to rule and wield power, and learning well, but in her heart, she still loves to serve; and in her bed, Catelyn is only too happy to indulge her.  They do not discuss how long Cat will stay, or what will happen after she leaves.

 

*********************

 

Some months into her rule, Brienne pays a visit to Castle Black, where Jamie Lannister is serving out the remainder of his days and is well on his way to becoming Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.  He is not a broken man, but he is changed greatly. That old sheen of Lannister confidence has been wiped away, replaced by a humility that surprises her.  “Old friend,” he says.  “It is good to see you.”

“How is it, living up here?” she asks.

“Fucking cold,” he replies.  “Other than that, not so bad.”  He studies her face a moment.  “You’re not here to kill me, are you, Brienne?”

Brienne gives a faint, sad smile.  “No, Ser Jamie.  I have wanted to see you for a long time.  I did not get to say goodbye before they sent you here.”

“I owe you my life,” he says after a long pause.

“And I owe you mine.  And more.  Had you not gone to Winterfell that day, who knows who far into darkness I would have gone.  You sent Catelyn back to me.  She has been …. acting as the lady of my castle.”

Jamie smiles slightly.  “So it _is_ that, then?”

Brienne nods.  “It is that.”

“I knew it.”  He seems a little amused.

Brienne barely raises an eyebrow.

“You’re not very good at hiding your feelings, you know,” he scolds.  “I always knew.”

Brienne pauses, remembering that the reason he so easily recognized her feelings for Catelyn was because he had been trying to hide a love of his own.  “I am sorry for Cersei’s fate,” she says quietly.

Jamie shrugs, but his eyes are a little pained.  “She was lost to me long before the absinthe flames consumed her.”

Brienne puts a hand on his shoulder.  She can well imagine what it would do to her if someone were to take Catelyn from her.  “Jamie-”

He interrupts her. “Do whatever you must, Evenstar, to keep your lady at your side. Love, even flawed love, is difficult to come by.”

Brienne looks at him a moment. She nods once, without a word. She draws herself up. “If there is anything you ever need, Ser Jamie, send word and I will do what I can.”

“Tell the Lady of Evenfall that I am sorry for what I have done to her sons.”

 

***************

 

Brienne and Catelyn stand on the balcony in Brienne’s chamber, overlooking Shipbreaker Bay.  The night is clear, and Catelyn feels as though she can see a thousand times as many stars as she can at Winterfell.  The winds blow in off the water about too strong by half, messing Catelyn’s hair and tugging at her skirts like a child in need of attention. Even a little disheveled, Brienne thinks, Catelyn looks beautifully regal, a lady who belongs presiding over a castle such as this one.

Brienne stands behind her, embracing her as they talk of her conversation with Jamie, and his words of contrition for his actions against the Stark sons.  Cat reflects that whatever she may be teaching Brienne about politics and ruling, she is learning as much about mercy and grace from Brienne.

When they finally fall silent a moment, Brienne reaches into a pouch at her belt, and produces something shiny.  Catelyn’s eyes take a moment to focus in the low light, but then she can see:  it is a necklace, a golden circle, and in the center is the House Tarth sigil of suns and crescents.  The outside is a beautiful filigree of silver stars and tendrils of gold, and at the top of the circle is the leaping trout of House Tully.  At the bottom of the circle is a Stark wolf, howling to the Tarth crescent moons.  There are innumerable tiny gems inlaid all around it.  Catelyn spends a long moment looking at it, trying to understand what she is seeing.

Brienne explains.  “We are a family of our own, Catelyn.  You and I, and your sweet children.   You are part of me now.  You were born a Tully, you will always be a Stark, but you are the lady of Evenfall as well.  You have been for some time now.  And I am asking if you will stay. I will not ask you give up any part of yourself to do it.” She drops to one knee. “Please say you will.”

Cat is too overwhelmed to speak.  Her eyes well up.

Brienne looks at her expectantly, a little nervous that this was perhaps too much.  She had ordered the necklace made some time ago, and had never been sure of the right time to give it.  But Catelyn has been her rock, her anchor, these last few months, and Brienne only wants her to stay and continue to do it. Jamie had convinced her that it was time.

“Of course I will,” she finally says, barely able to get the words out.  She touches Brienne’s cheek, and stands very still as Brienne rises and places the necklace on her.  Brienne looks at the piece, hanging delicately at the little depression at the base of Cat’s throat where it meets her breastbone, and thinks it looks so lovely there that she leans down and presses her lips to it.  They embrace for a long moment, and then kiss.  Catelyn pulls back and smiles at her, a little amusement twinkling in her eyes.

“What?”  Brienne demands.

“It took you a bit, but you managed it.”

“What, woman?” Brienne senses she is about get a bit of teasing.

“On the promenade of my father’s castle, by the blue water, with the breezes in your hair,” Cat says playfully, in a voice clearly meant to sound like Brienne’s.

Brienne turns a little red, remembering that moment.  It was only the second time they had made love and she had been so nervous.  Cat had been trying to coax a bit of salty talk from her by asking her “where would you like to kiss me?” and she’d replied with that instead.

She kisses Cat again, then straightens up, suddenly purposeful.  She takes off her cloak and throws it around Catelyn’s shoulders.  “No septon will bless us, so we shall bless ourselves,” she says.  She pulls a silk from her belt, take’s Cat’s hand, and wraps the silk around both their hands.  Brienne has never been married, but she has attended enough weddings, and Catelyn knows exactly what she is doing.  Brienne pauses and looks at her, waiting to be certain that she truly wants this. Catelyn nods her assent, the tourmaline color of her eyes piercing, even in this low light. “Catelyn of Houses Tully and Stark, I, Brienne of House Tarth, the Evenstar, would be joined with you now, in the sight of the Gods.”

“One heart, one soul, one flesh,” Catelyn whispers fiercely. “Woe to him who would try to tear it asunder.”

“With this kiss, I pledge my love.”  Brienne leans in, tastes the softness of her lady’s lips for several long moments, and then releases her hands.

“I wish I had known I would be getting married tonight,” Catelyn quips.  “I would have dressed a bit better.”

“You are beautiful as you are,” Brienne answers. “Because you are mine.”

She picks Catelyn up, as she has done times before, and carries her in to the bedchamber.  She carefully peels the coverlet back to reveal that she has spread rose petals on the mattress.  Catelyn cannot help but laugh and plant a hundred kisses all over Brienne’s face and neck.  Brienne looks a little embarrassed but Catelyn takes her face with both hands and reassures her with another deep kiss.  “My Evenstar,” she exclaims, “you are full of such wonderful surprises tonight!”

They lay down among the petals, slowly undressing and kissing each other everywhere.  At one point, Brienne flips herself on top of Catelyn, holding her hands, and then gently but firmly pins them to the bed near Catelyn’s head.  She gazes lovingly into her eyes.  “And now I have you,” she says with mock seriousness.  “You had best not try to escape.”

Catelyn smiles seductively, delighting in Brienne’s full weight on top of her, tingling a bit at her dearest’s little moment of dominance.  “Oh, my Lord.  Are you planning to ravage me?”

“What sort of wedding night would it be if I did not?” Brienne replies, continuing to hold her down and kiss her hotly, her eyes lit with desire, but also merriment.

But after a moment, she releases Cat’s wrists, and propped up on her elbows, gazes earnestly into her eyes.  “Am I truly enough for you, my lady, that you feel you can bear the rest of your life with me?  You do not wish that I were more of a lady, like you?  Or that I were simply a man?”

Catelyn gives her a loving smile and touches her cheek.  “I have said this before, my love. You are perfect, exactly as you are, and there is no part of you that I do not love,” she whispers, lightly stroking her hands over Brienne’s back.  “I love your strong back, and your broad shoulders.  They have carried me when I needed it, and sometimes when I only wanted it.”  She kisses one of Brienne’s shoulders lightly.  “I love your strong arms which have held me so tightly, and especially your sword arm, which has protected me from harm more times than I can count.”  She continues lightly stroking Brienne’s body, now moving her fingers delicately, softly over her arms.

“I love your face,” she goes on, stroking Brienne’s cheek.  “You are both handsome and beautiful to me, and when I kiss you…”  She pauses, kissing Brienne’s cheek first, and then spending a moment lost in her soft lips.  “…the smoothness of your cheeks and the softness of your mouth are a heaven to me.”  They spend another long moment in a kiss before Catelyn moves on.  She rolls Brienne off of her and sets herself on top of her.

She kisses the space between Brienne’s breasts and says, “I love this space, here.  Because behind it dwells a strong and loving heart, a woman’s heart, that loves me as I have never been loved before.”  She kisses each of Brienne’s breasts, spending a moment lingering with her warm, wet mouth on Brienne’s pale pink nipples until they grow stiff and Brienne is sighing a little with pleasure.  “I love these soft tits of yours, because I can rest my head on them when you hold me, and because I can fill you with happy sighs when I kiss them.”

Brienne’s eyes are filling up with hot tears as Catelyn gently caresses her everywhere and loves each and every part of her.

Catelyn kisses Brienne’s hands and says, “I love these great, strong hands, which have held mine, which have killed for me, which have stroked my hair softly, and which have given me pleasure in a thousand different ways.  Especially,” she adds coyly, “these fingers,” pulling them into her mouth.

Brienne pushes Cat onto her side, and props herself up, so that they are face to face, and reaches down between Catelyn’s legs to stroke her there, as she continues.  Catelyn pauses for a moment, moaning softly, enjoying Brienne’s touch.  “You see?  I love your fingers,” she sighs.

“I love your hips, and your long, strong legs,” she goes on, throwing her own leg over them to give Brienne an easier reach. She pauses a few more moments to enjoy her touches.

She then gently removes Brienne’s fingers and pushes Brienne onto her back again.  “I love your sex,” she says, gazing directly into Brienne’s eyes.  She nudges Brienne’s thighs apart, and strokes her there, softly teasing pleasure from all its nerves.  “I love its familiarity, I love its warm softness, I love its taste, I love the feel of it when it is wet with wanting my touch, as it is now.”  She leans down, and kisses her there, pleased at the little tremors of pleasure that she is sending through this great, strong body. She lingers there a moment, kissing it, and breathing its scent. “I love that I can give you such joy with it. I love,” she says, with a look that drives Brienne to madness, “that for all your strength, I can make you helpless when I tend to it.”

“Oh, Catelyn… my sweet Catelyn…”  Brienne sighs, overwhelmed, the strength of her desire now indistinct from the strength of her love.

“I love the sound of your voice, when you speak, when you laugh, when you whisper my name.”  More kisses, more sighs.  “There is no part of you that I do not love, exactly as it is.  You are exactly what I needed and could not have known to ask the gods to send me. You are beautiful as you are. Because you are mine.”

They make love, and then again, until they are exhausted wrecks, until the air is heavy with the scent of sex mingling with the fragrant flowers, till neither one could possibly bear another moment of it. They will be plucking petals from their skin and hair for days.

 

*******************

 

Tarth becomes a home for warriors of honor, be they men or women.  It begins to draw some of the finest swordmasters, battle historians and blacksmiths in all the kingdoms.  Brienne the Evenstar must work with many historians and legal men to create what she envisions.  But she enacts a framework wherein her own father’s line and name will continue, regardless that she has no blood children of her own.  On the Sapphire Isle, two houses may now be joined by other means than the marriages of their sons and daughters.

Catelyn becomes Catelyn Tully Stark of House Tarth.  It is a mouthful, but it is more or less accepted even if its inner workings are not entirely understood by most.  It is understood that she is the lady of Evenfall Hall, that she has the run of the castle and the ear of the Evenstar, and that Brienne will not go anywhere without her if it can be helped. It is understood that the Evenstar has embraced the Widow Stark and her children and loves them as if they were blood. It is hard to argue with the results: a happy castle, an isle constantly alive with visitors and bustling with trade.

Brienne chooses Arya as her successor.  At first, Arya balks at this, claiming that she has no interest in that type of power.  But she comes to understand that she is being asked to be part of something that has never been done before.  “We are not making history,” Brienne tells her.  “We are breaking it, and replacing it with something new.”  It is a hard thing to refuse.  She becomes Arya Stark of House Tarth, and later, she will be called Evenstar.

Sansa rules at Winterfell, and Bran is learning at her side so that when she marries, he can become Lord there.

Rickon grows up by the sea, and learns to sail, fish and fight from Brienne. He too will become a knight, brave and good, because he has learned from his strong, wise lady mother, and her Evenstar, the selfless and caring Brienne.  His young heart takes note of the bond between them, the delight they take in each other, the respect and care they show one another. He observes how his mother’s eyes shine when Brienne takes her hand, and how content Brienne’s face looks when she walks the promenade with his mother on her arm. He knows one day when he is older, he will find a love of his own and marry, and as he watches his mother and Brienne as they laugh, grieve, grow, plan, and strive together, he hopes that it will measure up to theirs.


End file.
